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Page 11
VII
DESDEMONA FORGETS HER MANNERS
It has been recorded that, as the weeks slipped by after Desdemona's
first little term of absence from her home at Shaws, she grew daily more
sedate in her manner and less given to the irresponsible activities of
hound youth.
It was also noticed that she developed a habit of carrying off all her
best bones, or other solid comestibles, instead of despatching them
beside her dish as her sophisticated habit had always been. What was not
known, even to the astute Bates, was that the most of such eatables were
laboriously carried over close upon four miles of downland by the Lady
Desdemona, for ultimate storage in her cave, where, a little
reluctantly, she devoured some of them and stowed away others to be more
or less devoured by insects, and, it may be, by prowling stoats and
other vermin, during the bloodhound's periods of residence in her own
proper home.
Finn accompanied his mate, as a matter of course, upon most of her
pilgrimages to the cave. But, somewhat to his chagrin, he found, as time
went on, that Desdemona became less and less keen upon his company.
Latterly, in fact, she came as near as so courtly a creature could to
sending him about his business flatly, and she formed a habit of lying
across the mouth of her cave in a manner which certainly suggested that
she grudged Finn entry to the old place--a thing which ruffled him more
than he cared to admit.
As a matter of fact, the Lady Desdemona had not the faintest idea why
she should adopt this tone and manner toward her mate. She admired Finn
as much as ever; she liked him well, and had no shadow of a reason for
mistrusting him. But she had her own weird to dree; and inherited
memories and instincts far stronger than any wish or inclination of her
daily life, were just now dominating her utterly.
She was full of a vague anxiousness; a sense of impending difficulties;
a blind but undeniable determination to be forearmed against she knew
not what dangers and needs. And among other things, other vague
instincts the which she must obey with or without understanding, there
was the desire to store up food, and to preserve intact her sole command
of the privacy of her cave. If Finn had been human, he would have
shrugged his shoulders, and in private given vent to generalizations
regarding the inscrutability of females. As it was, he very likely
shrugged his great gray shoulders, but went his way without remark.
Then came the day upon which Desdemona disappeared from Shaws, and Finn,
to the Master's surprise, slept in his own proper bed at Nuthill.
The fact was he had parted with Desdemona that evening under rather
painful circumstances. In the early evening he had journeyed with her to
the cave--she carrying a large mutton-bone which she made no pretense of
offering to share with her mate--and her attitude throughout had been
one of really unaccountable chilliness and reserve. They had drunk
together--the cold nectar of a prehistoric dew-pond that lay within a
hundred yards of the cave--and Desdemona had turned away curtly and
hurried back to the cave, with never a lick or a look in Finn's
direction, as though she feared he might take the place away in his
teeth. Finn had noticed that she moved wearily, as though action taxed
her strength; yet he thought her unaccountably ready to walk away from
him.
He ran down a rabbit for his mate, and deposited it before her at the
cave's mouth in the most friendly manner. Then, before he could get time
to tear the pelt off for her, the Lady Desdemona, with a snappishness
more suggestive of a hedge-side cur than of a hound of her rank,
actually snatched away the rabbit, and with never a "Thank you," or a
"By your leave," carried it right inside the cave, dropping it there and
returning to bar the entrance, with a look in her red-hawed eyes and a
lift of her golden flews which, if not actual snarling, was, as folks
say, near enough to make no difference. At least it very plainly told
Finn he was not wanted there; and the limits of his punctilious courtesy
having now been passed, he had turned away without look or sound and
descended the Down in high dudgeon.
It was clear to Finn that his mate needed a lesson in manners, and so,
moodily, he stalked away and went hungry to bed like the illogical male
creature he was, vaguely surmising that in his discomfort there must be
something of retribution for Desdemona. Had he but known it, he had a
long line of human precedents in the matter of this particular piece of
foolishness, even to the detail of the untasted dinner-dish which he
left in the back porch when he went to bed at Nuthill.
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