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Page 16
The Mistress had named him "Bruce," after the stately Scottish
chieftain who was her history-hero. And she still called him
Bruce--fifty times a day--in the weary hope of teaching him his
name. But every one else on The Place gave him a title instead of
a name--a title that stuck: "The Pest." He spent twenty-four
hours, daily, living up to it.
Compared with Bruce's helplessly clownish trouble-seeking
propensities, Charlie Chaplin's screen exploits are miracles of
heroic dignity and of good luck.
There was a little artificial water-lily pool on The Place,
perhaps four feet deep. By actual count, Bruce fell into it no
less than nine times in a single week. Once or twice he had
nearly drowned there before some member of the family chanced to
fish him out. And, learning nothing from experience, he would
fall in again, promptly, the next day.
The Master at last rigged up a sort of sloping wooden platform,
running from the lip of the pool into the water, so that Bruce
could crawl out easily, next time he should tumble in. Bruce
watched the placing of this platform with much grave interest.
The moment it was completed, he trotted down it on a tour of
investigation. At its lower edge he slipped and rolled into the
pool. There he floundered, with no thought at all of climbing out
as he had got in, until the Master rescued him and spread a wire
net over the whole pool to avert future accidents.
Thenceforth, Bruce met with no worse mischance, there, than the
perpetual catching of his toe-pads in the meshes of the wire.
Thus ensnared he would stand, howling most lamentably, until his
yells brought rescue.
Though the pool could be covered with a net, the wide lake at the
foot of the lawn could not be. Into the lake Bruce would wade
till the water reached his shoulders. Then with a squeal of
venturesome joy, he would launch himself outward for a swim; and,
once facing away from shore, he never had sense enough to turn
around.
After a half-hour of steady swimming, his soft young strength
would collapse. A howl of terror would apprise the world at large
that he was about to drown. Whereat some passing boatman would
pick him up and hold him for ransom, or else some one from The
Place must jump into skiff or canoe and hie with all speed to the
rescue. The same thing would be repeated day after day.
The local S.P.C.A. threatened to bring action against the Master
for letting his dog risk death, in this way, from drowning.
Morbidly, the Master wished the risk might verge into a
certainty.
The puppy's ravenous appetite was the wonder of all. He stopped
eating only when there was nothing edible in reach. And as his
ideas of edible food embraced everything that was chewable,--from
bath-towels to axle-grease--he was seldom fasting and was
frequently ill.
Nature does more for animals than for humans. By a single
experience she warns them, as a rule, what they may safely eat
and what they may not. Bruce was the exception. He would pounce
upon and devour a luscious bit of laundry-soap with just as much
relish as though a similar bit of soap had not made him horribly
sick the day before.
Once he munched, relishfully, a two-pound box of starch, box and
all; on his recovery, he began upon a second box, and was unhappy
when it was taken from him.
He would greet members of the family with falsetto-thunderous
barks of challenge as they came down the drive from the highway.
But he would frisk out in joyous welcome to meet and fawn upon
tramps or peddlers who sought to invade The Place. He could
scarce learn his own name. He could hardly be taught to obey the
simplest command. As for shaking hands or lying down at order
(those two earliest bits of any dog's education), they meant no
more to Bruce than did the theory of quadratic equations.
At three months he launched forth merrily as a chicken-killer;
gleefully running down and beheading The Place's biggest
Orpington rooster. But his first kill was his last. The Master
saw to that.
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