A Spinner in the Sun Part 24

He retraced his steps over the dusty road, searching the ground. He discovered that Laddie's tracks ended in the road near Doctor Dexter's house, and turned toward the gate. Tales of mysterious horrors, vaguely hinted at, came back to him now with ominous force. He searched the yard carefully, looking in every nook and corner, then a cry of anguish reached his ears.

Great beads of sweat stood out upon Piper Tom's forehead, as he burst in at the laboratory door. On a narrow table, tightly strapped down, lay Laddie, fully conscious, his faithful heart laid bare. The odour of anesthetics was so faint as to be scarcely noticeable. At the dog's side stood Doctor Dexter, in a blood-stained linen coat, with a pad of paper and a short pencil in his white, firm hands. He was taking notes.

With infinite appeal in his agonised eyes, Laddie recognised his master, who at last had come too late. Piper Tom seized the knife from the table, and, with a quick, clean stroke, ended the torture. Doctor Dexter looked up, his mask-like face wearing an expression of insolent inquiry.

"Man," cried the Piper, his voice shaking, "have you never been loved by a dog?"

The silence was tense, but Doctor Dexter had taken out his watch, and was timing the spasmodic pulsations of the heart he had been so carefully studying.

"Aye," said the Piper, pa.s.sionately, "watch it till the last--you cannot hurt him now. 'T is the truest heart in all the world save a woman's, and you do well to study it, having no heart of your own. A poor beast you are, if a dog has never loved you. Take your pencil and write down on the bit of paper you have there that you've seen the heart of a dog. Write down that you've seen the heart of one who left his own kind to be with you, to fight for you, even against them.

Write down that 't is a good honest heart with red blood in it, that never once failed and never could fail.

"When a man's mother casts him off, when his wife forsakes him, when his love betrays him, his dog stays true. When he's poor and his friends pa.s.s him by on the other side of the street, looking the other way, his dog fares with him, ready to starve with him for very love of him. 'T is a man and his dog, I'm thinking, against the whole world.

"This little lad here was only a yellow mongrel, there was no fine blood in him; he couldn't bring in the birds nor swim after the ducks men kill to amuse themselves. He was worth no high price to anybody--n.o.body wanted him but me. When I took him away from the boys who were hurting him, and set his poor broken leg as best I could, he knew me for his master and claimed me then.

"He's walked with me through four States and never whined. He's gone without food for days at a time, and never complained. He's been cold and hungry, and we've slept together, more than once, on the ground in the snow, with only one blanket between us. He's kept me from freezing to death with his warm body, he's suffered from thirst the same as I, and never so much as whimpered. We've been comrades and we've fared together, as only man and dog may fare.

"When every man's face was set against you, did you never have a dog to trust you? When there was never a man nor a woman you could call your friend, did a dog never come to you and lick your hand? When you've been bent with grief you couldn't stand up under, did a dog never come to you and put his cold nose on your face? Did a dog never reach out a friendly paw to tell you that you were not alone--that it was you two together?

"When you've come home alone late at night, tired to death with the world and its ways, was there never a dog to greet you with his bark of welcome? Did a dog never sit where you told him to sit, and guard your property till you came back, though it might be hours? When you could trust no man to guard your treasures, could you never trust a dog?

Man, man, the world has fair been cruel if you've never known the love of a dog!

"I've heard these things of you, but I thought folks were prattling, as folks will, but dogs never do. I thought they were lying about you--that such things couldn't be true. They said you were cutting up dogs to learn more of people, and I'm thinking, if we're so much alike as that, 't is murder to kill a dog."

"You killed him," said Anthony Dexter, speaking for the first time. "I didn't."

"Yes," answered the Piper, "I killed him, but 't was to keep him from being hurt. I'd do the same for a man or a woman, if there was need.

If 't was a child you had tied down here with your blood-stained straps, cut open to see an innocent heart, your own being black past all pardon, I'd do the same for the child and all the more quickly if it was my own. I never had a child--I've never had a woman to love me, but I've been loved by a dog. I've thought that even yet I might know the love of a woman, for a man who deserves the love of a dog is worthy of a woman, and a man who will torture a dog will torture a woman, too.

"Laddie," said the Piper, laying his hand upon the blood-stained body, "no man ever had a truer comrade, and I'll not insult your kind by calling this brute a cur. Laddie, it was you and I, and now it's I alone. Laddie--" here the Piper's voice broke, and, taking up the knife again, he cut the straps. With the tears raining down his face, he stumbled out of the laboratory, the mutilated body of his pet in his arms.

Anthony Dexter looked after him curiously. The mask-like expression of his face was slightly changed. In a corner of the laboratory, seeming to shrink from him, stood the phantom black figure, closely veiled.

Out of the echoing stillness came the pa.s.sionate accusation: "A man who will torture a dog will torture a woman, too."

He carefully removed the blood stains from the narrow table, and pushed it back in its place, behind a screen. The straps were cut, and consequently useless, so he wrapped them up in a newspaper and threw them into the waste basket. He cleaned his knife with unusual care, and wiped an ugly stain from his forceps.

Then he took off his linen coat, folded it up, and placed it in the covered basket which held soiled linen from the laboratory. He washed his hands and copied the notes he had made, for there was blood upon the page. He tore the original sheet into fine bits, and put the pieces into the waste basket. Then he put on his cuffs and his coat, and went out of the laboratory.

He was dazed, and did not see that his own self-torture had filled him with primeval l.u.s.t to torture in return. He only knew that his brilliant paper must remain forever incomplete, since his services to science were continually unappreciated and misunderstood. What was one yellow dog, more or less, in the vast economy of Nature? Was he lacking in discernment, because, as Piper Tom said, he had never been loved by a dog?

He sat down in the library to collect himself and observed, with a curious sense of detachment, that Evelina was walking in the hall instead of in the library, as she usually did when he sat there.

An hour--or perhaps two--went by, then, unexpectedly, Ralph came home, having paused a moment outside. He rushed into the library with his face aglow.

"Look, Dad," he cried, boyishly, holding it at arm's length; "see what I found on the steps! It's a pearl necklace, with a diamond in the clasp! Some of the stones are discoloured, but they're good and can be made right again, I've found it, so it's mine, and I'm going to give it to the girl I marry!"

Anthony Dexter's pale face suddenly became livid. He staggered over to Ralph, s.n.a.t.c.hed the necklace out of his hand, and ground the pearls under his heel. "No," he cried, "a thousand times, no! The pearls are cursed!"

Then, for the second time, he fainted.

XVIII

Undine

"It's almost as good as new!" cried Araminta, gleefully. She was clad in a sombre calico Mother Hubbard, of Miss Mehitable's painstaking manufacture, and hopping back and forth on the bare floor of her room at Miss Evelina's.

"Yes," answered Doctor Ralph, "I think it's quite as good as new." He was filled with professional pride at the satisfactory outcome of his first case, and yet was not at all pleased with the idea of Araminta's returning to Miss Mehitable's, as, perforce, she soon must do.

"Don't walk any more just now," he said "Come here and sit down. I want to talk to you."

Araminta obeyed him unquestioningly. He settled her comfortably in the haircloth easy-chair and drew his own chair closer. There was a pause, then she looked up at him, smiling with childish wistfulness.

"Are you sorry it's well?" he asked.

"I--I think I am," she answered, shyly, the deep crimson dyeing her face.

"I can't see you any more, you know," said Ralph, watching her intently.

The sweet face saddened in an instant and Araminta tapped her foot restlessly upon the floor. "Perhaps," she returned, slowly, "Aunt Hitty will be taken sick. Oh, I do hope she will!"

"You miserable little sinner," laughed Ralph, "do you suppose for a moment that Aunt Hitty would send for me if she were ill? Why, I believe she'd die first!"

"Maybe Mr. Thorpe might be taken sick," suggested Araminta, hopefully.

"He's old, and sometimes I think he isn't very strong."

"He'd insist on having my father. You know they're old friends."

"Mr. Thorpe is old and your father is old," corrected Araminta, precisely, "but they haven't been friends long. Aunt Hitty says you must always say what you mean."

"That is what I meant. Each is old and both are friends. See?"

"It must be nice to be men," sighed Araminta, "and have friends. I've never had anybody but Aunt Hitty--and you," she added, in a lower tone,

"'No money, no friends, nothing but relatives,'" quoted Ralph, cynically. "It's hard lines, little maid--hard lines." He walked back and forth across the small room, his hands clasped behind his back--a favourite att.i.tude, Araminta had noted, during the month of her illness.

He pictured his probable reception should he venture to call upon her.

Personally, as it was, he stood none too high in the favour of the dragon, as he was wont to term Miss Mehitable in his unflattering thoughts. Moreover, he was a man, which counted heavily against him.

Since he had taken up his father's practice, he had heard a great deal about Miss Mehitable's view of marriage, and her determination to s.h.i.+eld Araminta from such an unhappy fate.

And Araminta had not been intended, by Dame Nature, for such s.h.i.+elding.

Every line of her body, rounding into womanhood, defied Aunt Hitty's well-meant efforts. The soft curve of her cheek, the dimples that lurked unsuspected in the comers of her mouth, the grave, sweet eyes--all these marked Araminta for love. She had, too, a wistful, appealing childishness.

"Did you like the story book?" asked Ralph.