Chapter XXXV Billy and the Italian
Mr. Morris stayed no longer. He followed Mr. Montague along the sidewalk a little way, and then exchanged a few hurried words with some men who were standing near, and hastened home through streets that seemed dark and dull after the splendor of the fire. Though it was still the middle of the night, Mrs. Morris was up and dressed and waiting for him. She opened the hall door with one hand and held a candle in the other. I felt frightened and miserable, and didn't want to leave Mr. Morris, so I crept in after him.
"Don't make a noise," said Mrs. Morris. "Laura and the boys are sleeping, and I thought it better not to wake them. It has been a terrible fire, hasn't it? Was it the hotel?" Mr. Morris threw himself into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
"Speak to me, William!" said Mrs. Morris, in a startled tone. "You are not hurt, are you?" and she put her candle on the table and came and sat down beside him.
He dropped his hands from his face, and tears were running down his cheeks. "Ten lives lost," he said; "among them Mrs. Montague."
Mrs. Morris looked horrified, and gave a little cry, "William, it can't be so!"
It seemed as if Mr. Morris could not sit still. He got up and walked to and fro on the floor. "It was an awful scene, Margaret. I never wish to look upon the like again. Do you remember how I protested against the building of that deathtrap? Look at the wide, open streets around it, and yet they persisted in running it up to the sky. God will require an account of those deaths at the hands of the men who put up that building. It is terrible--this disregard of human lives. To think of that delicate woman and her death agony." He threw himself in a chair and buried his face in his hands.
"Where was she? How did it happen? Was her husband saved, and Charlie?" said Mrs. Morris, in a broken voice.
"Yes; Charlie and Mr. Montague are safe. Charlie will recover from it. Montague's life is done. You know his love for his wife. Oh, Margaret! when will men cease to be fools? What does the Lord think of them when they say, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' And the other poor creatures burned to death--their lives are as precious in his sight as Mrs. Montague's."
Mr. Morris looked so weak and ill that Mrs. Morris, like a sensible woman, questioned him no further, but made a fire and got him some hot tea.
Then she made him lie down on the sofa, and she sat by him till day-break, when she persuaded him to go to bed. I followed her about, and kept touching her dress with my nose. It seemed so good to me to have this pleasant home after all the misery I had seen that night. Once she stopped and took my head between her hands, "Dear old Joe," she said, tearfully, "this a suffering world. It's well there's a better one beyond it."
In the morning the boys went down town before breakfast and learned all about the fire. It started in the top story of the hotel, in the room of some fast young men, who were sitting up late playing cards. They had smuggled wine into their room and had been drinking till they were stupid. One of them upset the lamp, and when the flames began to spread so that they could not extinguish them, instead of rousing some one near them, they rushed downstairs to get some one there to come up and help them put out the fire. When they returned with some of the hotel people, they found that the flames had spread from their room, which was in an "L" at the back of the house, to the front part, where Mrs. Montague's room was, and where the housemaids belonging to the hotel slept. By this time Mr. Montague had gotten upstairs; but he found the passageway to his wife's room so full of flames and smoke, that, though he tried again and again to force his way through, he could not. He disappeared for a time, then he came to Mr. Morris and got his boy, and took him to some rooms over his bank, and shut himself up with him.
For some days he would let no one in; then he came out with the look of an old man on his face, and his hair as white as snow, and went out to his beautiful house in the outskirts of the town.
Nearly all the horses belonging to the hotel were burned. A few were gotten out by having blankets put over their heads, but the most of them were so terrified that they would not stir.
The Morris boys said that they found the old Italian sitting on an empty box, looking at the smoking ruins of the hotel. His head was hanging on his breast, and his eyes were full of tears. His ponies were burned up, he said, and the gander, and the monkeys, and the goats, and his wonderful performing dogs. He had only his birds left, and he was a ruined man. He had toiled all his life to get this troupe of trained animals together, and now they were swept from him. It was cruel and wicked, and he wished he could die. The canaries, and pigeons, and doves, the hotel people had allowed him to take to his room, and they were safe. The parrot was lost--an educated parrot that could answer forty questions, and, among other things, could take a watch and tell the time of day.
Jack Morris told him that they had it safe at home, and that it was very much alive, quarreling furiously with his parrot Bella. The old man's face brightened at this, and then Jack and Carl, finding that he had had no breakfast, went off to a restaurant near by, and got him some steak and coffee. The Italian was very grateful, and as he ate, Jack said the tears ran into his coffee cup. He told them how much he loved his animals, and, how it "made ze heart bitter to hear zem crying to him to deliver zem from ze raging fire."
The boys came home, and got their breakfast and went to school. Miss Laura did not go out. She sat all day with a very quiet, pained face. She could neither read nor sew, and Mr. and Mrs. Morris were just as unsettled. They talked about the fire in low tones, and I could see that they felt more sad about Mrs. Montague's death than if she had died in an ordinary way. Her dear little canary, Barry, died with her. She would never be separated from him, and his cage had been taken up to the top of the hotel with her. He probably died an easier death than his poor mistress. Charley's dog escaped, but was so frightened that he ran out to their house, outside the town.
At tea time, Mr. Morris went down town to see that the Italian got a comfortable place for the night. When he came back, he said that he had found out that the Italian was by no means so old a man as he looked, and that he had talked to him about raising a sum of money for him among the Fairport people, till he had become quite cheerful, and said that if Mr. Morris would do that, he would try to gather another troupe of animals together and train them.
"Now, what can we do for this Italian?" asked Mrs. Morris. "We can't give him much money, but we might let him have one or two of our pets. There's Billy, he's a bright, little dog, and not two years old yet. He could teach him anything."
There was a blank silence among the Morris children. Billy was such a gentle, lovable, little dog, that he was a favorite with every one in the house. "I suppose we ought to do it," said Miss Laura, at last; "but how can we give him up?"
There was a good deal of discussion, but the end of it was that Billy was given to the Italian. He came up to get him, and was very grateful, and made a great many bows, holding his hat in his hand. Billy took to him at once, and the Italian spoke so kindly to him, that we knew he would have a good master. Mr. Morris got quite a large sum of money for him, and when he handed it to him, the poor man was so pleased that he kissed his hand, and promised to send frequent word as to Billy's progress and welfare.
Chapter XXXVI Dandy the Tramp
About a week after Billy left us, the Morris family, much to its surprise, became the owner of a new dog. He walked into the house one cold, wintry afternoon and lay calmly down by the fire. He was a brindled bull-terrier, and he had on a silver-plated collar with "Dandy" engraved on it. He lay all the evening by the fire, and when any of the family spoke to him, he wagged his tail, and looked pleased. I growled a little at him at first, but he never cared a bit, and just dozed off to sleep, so I soon stopped.
He was such a well-bred dog, that the Morrises were afraid that some one had lost him. They made some inquiries the next day, and found that he belonged to a New York gentleman who had come to Fairport in the summer in a yacht. This dog did not like the yacht. He came ashore in a boat whenever he got a chance, and if he could not come in a boat, he would swim. He was a tramp, his master said, and he wouldn't stay long in any place, The Morrises were so amused with his impudence, that they did not send him away, but said every day, "Surely he will be gone to-morrow."
However, Mr. Dandy had gotten into comfortable quarters, and he had no intention of changing them, for a while at least. Then he was very handsome, and had such a pleasant way with him, that the family could not help liking him. I never cared for him. He fawned on the Morrises, and pretended he loved them, and afterward turned around and laughed and sneered at them in a way that made me very angry. I used to lecture him sometimes, and growl about him to Jim, but Jim always said, "Let him alone. You can't do him any good. He was born bad. His mother wasn't good. He tells me that she had a bad name among all the dogs in her neighborhood. She was a thief and a runaway." Though he provoked me so often, yet I could not help laughing at some of his stories, they were so funny.
We were lying out in the sun, on the platform at the back of the house, one day, and he had been more than usually provoking, so I got up to leave him. He put himself in my way, however, and said, coaxingly, "Don't be cross, old fellow. I'll tell you some stories to amuse you, old boy. What shall they be about?"
"I think the story of your life would be about as interesting as anything you could make up," I said, dryly.
"All right, fact or fiction, whichever you like. Here's a fact, plain and unvarnished. Born and bred in New York. Swell stable. Swell coachman. Swell master. Jewelled fingers of ladies poking at me, first thing I remember. First painful experience--being sent to vet. to have ears cut."
"What's a vet.?" I said.
"A veterinary--animal doctor. Vet. didn't cut ears enough. Master sent me back. Cut ears again. Summer time, and flies bad. Ears got sore and festered, flies very attentive. Coachman set little boy to brush flies off, but he'd run out in yard and leave me. Flies awful. Thought they'd eat me up, or else I'd shake out brains trying to get rid of them. Mother should have stayed home and licked my ears, but was cruising about neighborhood. Finally coachman put me in dark place, powdered ears, and they got well."
"Why didn't they cut your tail, too?" I said, looking at his long, slim tail, which was like a sewer rat's.
"'Twasn't the fashion, Mr. Wayback; a bull-terrier's ears are clipped to keep them from getting torn while fighting."
"You're not a fighting dog," I said.
"Not I. Too much trouble. I believe in taking things easy."
"I should think you did," I said, scornfully. "You never put yourself out for any one, I notice; but, speaking of cropping ears, what do you think of it?"
"Well," he said, with a sly glance at my head, "it isn't a pleasant operation; but one might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. I don't care, now my ears are done."
"But," I said, "think of the poor dogs that will come after you."
"What difference does that make to me?" he said. "I'll be dead and out of the way. Men can cut off their ears, and tails, and legs, too, if they want to."
"Dandy," I said, angrily, "you're the most selfish dog that I ever saw."
"Don't excite yourself," he said, coolly. "Let me get on with my story. When I was a few months old, I began to find the stable yard narrow, and wondered what there was outside of it. I discovered a hole in the garden wall, and used to sneak out nights. Oh, what fun it was. I got to know a lot of street dogs, and we had gay times, barking under people's windows and making them mad, and getting into back yards and chasing cats. We used to kill a cat nearly every night. Policeman would chase us, and we would run and run till the water just ran off our tongues, and we hadn't a bit of breath left. Then I'd go home and sleep all day, and go out again the next night. When I was about a year old, I began to stay out days as well as nights. They couldn't keep me home. Then I ran away for three months. I got with an old lady on Fifth Avenue, who was very fond of dogs. She had four white poodles, and her servants used to wash them, and tie up their hair with blue ribbons, and she used to take them for drives in her phaeton in the park, and they wore gold and silver collars. The biggest poodle wore a ruby in his collar worth five hundred dollars. I went driving, too, and sometimes we met my master. He often smiled, and shook his head at me. I heard him tell the coachman one day that I was a little blackguard, and he was to let me come and go as I liked."
"If they had whipped you soundly," I said, "it might have made a good dog of you."
"I'm good enough now," said Dandy, airily. "The young ladies who drove with my master used to say that it was priggish and tiresome to be too good. To go on with my story: I stayed with Mrs. Judge Tibbett till I got sick of her fussy ways. She made a simpleton of herself over those poodles. Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they always sat in these chairs and had meals with her, and the servants all called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss Tiny, and Miss Fluff. One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got cross and bit Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me away from the house."
"Speaking about fools, Dandy," I said, "if it is polite to call a lady one, I should say that that lady was one. Dogs shouldn't be put out of their place. Why didn't she have some poor children at her table, and in her carriage, and let the dogs run behind?"
"Easy to see you don't know New York," said Dandy, with a laugh. "Poor children don't live with rich, old ladies. Mrs. Tibbett hated children, anyway. Then dogs like poodles would get lost in the mud, or killed in the crowd if they ran behind a carriage. Only knowing dogs like me can make their way about." I rather doubted this speech; but I said nothing, and he went on, patronizingly: "However, Joe, thou hast reason, as the French say. Mrs. Judge Tibbett didn't give her dogs exercise enough. Their claws were as long as Chinamen's nails, and the hair grew over their pads, and they had red eyes and were always sick, and she had to dose them with medicine, and call them her poor, little, 'weeny-teeny, sicky-wicky doggies.' Bah! I got disgusted with her. When I left her, I ran away to her niece's, Miss Ball's. She was a sensible young lady, and she used to scold her aunt for the way in which she brought up her dogs. She was almost too sensible, for her pug and I were rubbed and scrubbed within an inch of our lives, and had to go for such long walks that I got thoroughly sick of them. A woman, whom the servants called Trotsey, came every morning, and took the pug and me by our chains, and sometimes another dog or two, and took us for long tramps in quiet streets. That was Trotsey's business, to walk dogs, and Miss Ball got a great many fashionable young ladies who could not exercise their dogs, to let Trotsey have them, and they said that it made a great difference in the health and appearance of their pets. Trotsey got fifteen cents an hour for a dog. Goodness, what appetites those walks gave us, and didn't we make the dog biscuits disappear? But it was a slow life at Miss Ball's. We only saw her for a little while every day. She slept till noon. After lunch she played with us for a little while in the greenhouse, then she was off driving or visiting, and in the evening she always had company, or went to a dance, or to the theatre. I soon made up my mind that I'd run away. I jumped out of a window one fine morning, and ran home. I stayed there for a long time. My mother had been run over by a cart and killed, and I wasn't sorry. My master never bothered his head about me, and I could do as I liked. One day when I was having a walk, and meeting a lot of dogs that I knew, a little boy came behind me, and before I could tell what he was doing, he had snatched me up, and was running off with me. I couldn't bite him, for he had stuffed some of his rags in my mouth. He took me to a tenement house, in a part of the city that I had never been in before. He belonged to a very poor family. My faith, weren't they badly off--six children, and a mother and father, all living in two tiny rooms. Scarcely a bit of meat did I smell while I was there. I hated their bread and molasses, and the place smelled so badly that I thought I should choke.
"They kept me shut up in their dirty rooms for several days; and the brat of a boy that caught me slept with his arm around me at night. The weather was hot and sometimes we couldn't sleep, and they had to go up on the roof. After a while, they chained me up in a filthy yard at the back of the house, and there I thought I should go mad. I would have liked to bite them all to death, if I had dared. It's awful to be chained, especially for a dog like me that loves his freedom. The flies worried me, and the noises distracted me, and my flesh would fairly creep from getting no exercise. I was there nearly a month, while they were waiting for a reward to be offered. But none came; and one day, the boy's father, who was a street peddler, took me by my chain and led me about the streets till he sold me. A gentleman got me for his little boy, but I didn't like the look of him, so I sprang up and bit his hand, and he dropped the chain, and I dodged boys and policemen, and finally got home more dead than alive, and looking like a skeleton. I had a good time for several weeks, and then I began to get restless and was off again. But I'm getting tired; I want to go to sleep."
"You're not very polite," I said, "to offer to tell a story, and then go to sleep before you finish it."
"Look out for number one, my boy," said Dandy, with a yawn; "for if you don't, no one else will," and he shut his eyes and was fast asleep in a few minutes.
I sat and looked at him. What a handsome, good-natured, worthless dog he was. A few days later, he told me the rest of his history. After a great many wanderings, he happened home one day just as his master's yacht was going to sail, and they chained him up till they went on board, so that he could be an amusement on the passage to Fairport.
It was in November that Dandy came to us, and he stayed all winter. He made fun of the Morrises all the time, and said they had a dull, poky, old house, and he only stayed because Miss Laura was nursing him. He had a little sore on his back that she soon found out was mange. Her father said it was a bad disease for dogs to have, and Dandy had better be shot; but she begged so hard for his life, and said she would cure him in a few weeks, that she was allowed to keep him. Dandy wasn't capable of getting really angry, but he was as disturbed about having this disease as he could be about anything. He said that he had got it from a little, mangy dog, that he had played with a few weeks before. He was only with the dog a little while, and didn't think he would take it, but it seemed he knew what an easy thing it was to get.
Until he got well he was separated from us. Miss Laura kept him up in the loft with the rabbits, where we could not go; and the boys ran him around the garden for exercise. She tried all kind of cures for him, and I heard her say that though it was a skin disease, his blood must be purified. She gave him some of the pills that she made out of sulphur and butter for Jim, and Billy, and me, to keep our coats silky and smooth. When they didn't cure him, she gave him a few drops of arsenic every day, and washed the sore, and, indeed his whole body, with tobacco water or carbolic soap. It was the tobacco water that cured him.
Miss Laura always put on gloves when she went near him, and used a brush to wash him, for if a person takes mange from a dog, they may lose their hair and their eyelashes. But if they are careful, no harm comes from nursing a mangy dog, and I have never known of any one taking the disease.
After a time, Dandy's sore healed, and he was set free. He was right glad, he said, for he had got heartily sick of the rabbits. He used to bark at them and make them angry, and they would run around the loft, stamping their hind feet at him, in the funny way that rabbits do. I think they disliked him as much as he disliked them. Jim and I did not get the mange. Dandy was not a strong dog, and I think his irregular way of living made him take diseases readily. He would stuff himself when he was hungry, and he always wanted rich food. If he couldn't get what he wanted at the Morrises', he went out and stole, or visited the dumps at the back of the town.
When he did get ill, he was more stupid about doctoring himself than any dog that I have ever seen. He never seemed to know when to eat grass or herbs, or a little earth, that would have kept him in good condition. A dog should never be without grass. When Dandy got ill he just suffered till he got well again, and never tried to cure himself of his small troubles. Some dogs even know enough to amputate their limbs. Jim told me a very interesting story of a dog the Morrises once had, called Gyp, whose leg became paralyzed by a kick from a horse. He knew the leg was dead, and gnawed it off nearly to the shoulder, and though he was very sick for a time, yet in the end he got well.
To return to Dandy. I knew he was only waiting for the spring to leave us, and I was not sorry. The first fine day he was off, and during the rest of the spring and summer we occasionally met him running about the town with a set of fast dogs. One day I stopped and asked him how he contented himself in such a quiet place as Fairport, and he said he was dying to get back to New York, and was hoping that his master's yacht would come and take him away.
Poor Dandy never left Fairport. After all, he was not such a bad dog. There was nothing really vicious about him, and I hate to speak of his end. His master's yacht did not come, and soon the summer was over, and the winter was coming, and no one wanted Dandy, for he had such a bad name. He got hungry and cold, and one day sprang upon a little girl, to take away a piece of bread and butter that she was eating. He did not see the large house-dog on the door sill, and before he could get away, the dog had seized him, and bitten and shaken him till he was nearly dead. When the dog threw him aside, he crawled to the Morrises, and Miss Laura bandaged his wounds, and made him a bed in the stable.
One Sunday morning she washed and fed him very tenderly, for she knew he could not live much longer. He was so weak that he could scarcely eat the food that she put in his mouth, so she let him lick some milk from her finger. As she was going to church, I could not go with her, but I ran down the lane and watched her out of sight. When I came back, Dandy was gone. I looked till I found him. He had crawled into the darkest corner of the stable to die, and though he was suffering very much, he never uttered a sound. I sat by him and thought of his master in New York. If he had brought Dandy up properly he might not now be here in his silent death agony. A young pup should be trained just as a child is, and punished when he goes wrong. Dandy began badly, and not being checked in his evil ways, had come to this. Poor Dandy! Poor, handsome dog of a rich master! He opened his dull eyes, gave me one last glance, then, with a convulsive shudder, his torn limbs were still. He would never suffer any more.
When Miss Laura came home, she cried bitterly to know that he was dead. The boys took him away from her, and made him a grave in the corner of the garden.