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Page 7
So the Master did know something of what passed in the wolfhound's mind,
though they had no common language. As a matter of fact, the evening
meeting with Desdemona, the frolic on the Downs, and, at the last, the
running down of that rabbit, had combined to stir Finn more than
anything else had stirred him since he had fought for the Master's life
in a drought-smitten corner of the bush in Australia. Much that had lain
dormant in the great hound since the adventurous days of his leadership
of a dingo pack had waked into active, insistent life that evening, and,
brushing aside the habits of a year's soft living, had filled him once
more with the keenness of the hunter and the fire of the masterful mate
and leader.
It must not be supposed that nostalgia is a modern weakness, or the
monopoly of human minds. When Finn looked out across the moonlit Downs
that night, while strolling round the house with the Master before going
to bed, nostalgia filled his heart to aching-point and clouded his mind
with its elusive, tormenting vapors as surely as ever it clouded the
brain of any human wanderer. It was the nostalgia of the wilderness, of
the life of the wild; and, as he looked out into the moonlight, Finn saw
again in fancy, the boundary-rider's lonely humpy, the rugged, rocky
hills of the Tinnaburra; a fleeing wallaby in the distance, himself in
hot pursuit. He smelt again the tang of crushed gum-leaves, and heard
the fascinating rustle which tells of the movements of game, of live
food, over desiccated twigs and leaves, in bush untrodden by human feet.
Yes, Finn tasted to the full that night the nostalgia of the wilderness.
But if it stirred him deeply, it by no means made him unhappy. Across
the Downs' shoulder there was Desdemona; and he was free, save for the
ties of affection--stronger these than any dog-chain--which bound him to
the Nuthill folk. And as for Desdemona; owing to what many fanciers
would have regarded as the reprehensible eccentricity of the owner of
Shaws, Desdemona was almost as free as Finn.
V
DESDEMONA'S WANDERINGS
A week later, even easy-going Colonel Forde was a little perturbed by
the news that Lady Desdemona had been away all night and that nobody
knew of her whereabouts. However, the bitch strolled into the house
during the forenoon, looking none the worse for her night out, and, much
to his kennelman's annoyance, the Colonel refused to have her confined
to the kennels. He did not know that Finn was schooling this blood-royal
princess in the ways of the wild; but he could see that she looked fit
as a fiddle and was obviously very much enjoying her life. And so he
turned a deaf ear to his kennelman, even when the good fellow said,
protestingly:
"You don't see such a bitch once in twenty years, sir. She's just on her
eighteenth month and she's worth taking care of."
"She certainly is, Bates," replied the Colonel, "and you must keep a
sharp lookout. Look to her each day. But, upon my word, I think she's
also worth giving a good time to. Give her her head, and I don't think
she will ever disappoint us. Thank goodness, there are no traps or
poison about here, or none that I ever heard of."
"No, it's not that, sir," persisted the kennelman; "but Desdemona she's
good enough to win in the best company, and to mother winners, too. And
you know, sir, if a dog's to do hisself justice on the bench, you can't
let him go skirmishing around the country like a gipsy's lurcher. It
sorter roughs 'em somehow. The judges don't like it, and the Fancy
don't, neither, sir. Look at the chalk an' that on her coat this
morning, sir."
"Ah well," said the Colonel, with a little laugh, "we never have bred
for the judges, Bates; nor yet for the Fancy, either; and if they can't
recognize the merits of a bitch like that because she's been living a
natural, happy sort of life, instead of a cage-life--why, then, that's
their loss, not ours, and we must chance it."
And so the kennelman shrugged his shoulders and the Lady Desdemona
continued to enjoy life, the new and wider life to which she was being
introduced by that hardened wanderer and past-master in the lore of the
wild--Finn.
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