Growing Up

________________________________________________
Title:     Growing Up
Author: Katharine Lee Bates [More Titles by Bates]

"His years were full; his years were joyous; why
Must love be sorrow, when his gracious name
Recalls his lovely life of limb and eye?"

--Swinburne's At a Dog's Grave.

Now that we realized not only that we had adopted Sigurd but that Sigurd had adopted us, we entered into an ever deepening enjoyment of our dog. Be it understood that we were teachers, writers, servants of causes, boards, committees, mere professional women, with too little leisure for the home we loved. Had our hurried days given opportunity for the fine art of mothering we would have cherished a child instead of a collie, but Sigurd throve on neglect and saved us from turning into plaster images by making light of all our serious concerns. No academic dignities impressed his happy irreverence.

"What is Sigurd slinging about there on the lawn?" I asked on his first Commencement morning. "It looks as if he had a muskrat by the tail."

Joy-of-Life glanced apprehensively from the window to the bed, on which she had carefully laid out a dean's glistening regalia.

"My cap!" she ejaculated and dashed downstairs and out of the door and away over the grass after a frolicsome bandit who knew of no better use for a mortar-board--perhaps there is none--than to spin it around by its gilt tassel.

He had no regard for manuscript, after a thorough investigation had convinced him that it was not good to eat, and made no scruple of breaking in on our most absorbed moments with an insistent demand for play. Whatever the game might be, he infused it with dramatic quality, turning every romp into a thrilling adventure. He liked to pretend that he was Jack the Giant-Killer and would crouch and growl and bristle and finally hurl himself upon some ogre of a wastepaper basket, overthrowing it in the first onslaught and then worrying its scattered contents with mimic fury. For punishment, we would clap the basket tight over his head, and he would back into a corner, indulging in all sorts of profane remarks while he pawed and shook that insulting helmet off, but carefully, for he clearly understood that, though what it held was subject to his teeth, the basket itself must not be harmed. He pretended to be bitterly outraged by this treatment, but no sooner was the basket in position beside the desk again than he would caper up and gleefully knock it over, promptly presenting his ruffled head to have his punishment repeated.

Apart from our enjoyment of his crimes, it was difficult to punish him, because his sunny spirit turned every fresh experience into fun. He reminded me of a family tradition of an incorrigible baby uncle, whose clerical father, in despair at the child's ability to find amusement under all penal circumstances, stripped him naked and shut him into an empty room to repent of his sins. But when the parental eye condescended to the keyhole, it beheld a rosy cherub with puffed-out cheeks dancing merrily about and blowing a bewildered fly from one end of the chamber to the other.

Sigurd loved nothing better than make-believe discipline,--to be whacked with the feather-duster, "blown away" with the bellows, rolled up in the Sunday newspaper, anything that gave him an excuse for frisking, barking, dodging, scampering, kicking, rolling, tumbling, and rushing in at the last for a hug of assured understanding. We could keep him quiet for hours at a time by putting a cooky or any bit of sweet into a small pasteboard box, tying it up and fitting it into as many more, of increasing sizes, as time and material allowed. Sigurd would watch the process with sparkling eyes and then, taking the packet between his forepaws, settle down to the long task of getting at that cooky. Sometimes he would sigh with weariness or sink his yellow head to the floor in momentary despair. But he never gave up, though he often paused long enough to restore his energies by a nap. Taking the ragged bundle to another part of the room, as if his labors might be assisted by some special quality in a different rug, he would fall upon his puzzle again and not desist until the goal of all that patient endeavor, one morsel of sweetness, gave its brief delight to his triumphant tongue. This device of the boxes was a great resource when rough weather kept us in, for the youngster, who did not yet venture far without us, was incessant in his search for occupation. When this led him into genuine mischief and brought upon him actual rebuke, he took it so to heart that no member of the household, in kitchen or study, could get on with her work for the next half-day, for Sigurd would trot from one to another, with imploring eyes, insisting on shaking paws and being forgiven over and over again.

A most affectionate little fellow he was, and would sit still at my knee by the hour so long as he was occasionally patted and addressed by what he instantly recognized as a pet name,--Opals, or Blessed Buttercup, or Honey of Hybla, or Sulphur of my Soul. Epithets failing, he would touch my foot at intervals with a reminding paw. Then, absorbed in my work, I would absent-mindedly, on the edges of my consciousness, conjure up more titles for him,--Yellowboy, Crocus, Sunflower, Topaz, Mustard, Nugget, Starshine, his appreciative tail thumping the floor at every one. He wanted to be good and was aided by a happy disposition that, when one line of activity was cut off, found prompt solace in another. After a few trials had convinced him that bones, though polished in his most masterly manner and disposed behind doors and under sofa pillows with engaging modesty, were not acceptable ornaments of the house, he so rejoiced in the new-found art of burying them in the earth that, for a time, all his dainties went the same way, and the gardener's hoe would turn up petrified pieces of sponge cake and gingerbread at which Sigurd would sniff in embarrassed reminiscence.

Day by day the puppy was learning not only the ways of the house, but what he considered a proper demeanor toward our variety of callers. He took up the domestic routine almost at once and developed such an exact sense of time that we used to call him our four-o'clock. At this merry hour we would drop pens, shut books and take Sigurd to walk,--a duty that he by no means allowed us to forget. At the exact moment his Woof, Woof rang out like a bell into "the still air of delightful studies" and upon his protesting playmates Sigurd would burst like a thunderbolt, catching at our dresses and literally dragging us away from our desks. At mealtimes, too, with inexorable punctuality he herded the family to the dining room. But most of the day he was doing sentry duty on the doorsteps, incidentally offering his comment on every happening of the road and neighborhood. Tramps he abominated and, not content with driving them from our own premises, roared them away from every back door on the hill. His prejudice had to do, apparently, less with their looks and even their smell than with something stealthy and furtive in their approach. Skulking he abhorred. On one occasion he brought pink confusion to the cheeks of a little seamstress who was passing in a bundle at the door while her sheepish young escort hid in the shrubbery. It did not take Sigurd thirty seconds to drive that gawk from cover. To a recognized friend our collie would act as master of ceremonies, bounding down the walk to give him welcome, barking sharply to save him the trouble of ringing the bell, dashing in ahead with the glorious news of the arrival and then scampering back to thrust into the visitor's palm a cordial, clumsy paw, wagging that plumy tail meanwhile with an impetuous swing that sometimes swept before it small articles from cabinet or tea-table. Sometimes he would take a fancy to an utter stranger and greet him as an angel from the blue, singing love-at-first-sight to him at the top of his funny squeal, a four-legged troubadour. College girls he regarded as his natural chums and would frisk about them or leap upon them as the mood took him; middle-aged folk, like his mistresses, were all very well in their serviceable way; but the romance of life centered for Sigurd in old ladies. The whiter the hair, the more beautiful. For them he would spring up on his hind feet and rest his forepaws on their shoulders, pressing his face against their cheeks with such ardor that once, when such an encounter occurred on the street, a gentleman rushed from across the road, with upraised cane, to the rescue.

"Kindly let us alone, sir," crisply rebuked the Lovely Object, her bonnet askew but her face beaming. "This dog and I understand each other and we want no interference."

When a company of callers were seated, Sigurd, in a rapture of hospitality, would hurry again and again around the circle, shaking paws with each in turn and uttering a continuous, soft quaver of welcome, pleasure and pride. Then he would lie down contentedly in the very center of the group, now and then rolling over on his back in the hope that it would occur to somebody to slap his fluffy breast.

At first he often made mistakes in his office of sentinel. It was funny to see him rush madly to the door at a suspicious step and then, abashed by the jocular greeting of some household familiar, drop the role of heroic defender and, waving his tail affably but with a certain reserve, push by on the pretense that he was just coming out to take a squint at the weather.

Of sensitive and generous nature, our golden collie was quick to feel the difference between an intentional hurt and an accident. He had been with us only a few weeks when a college colleague, then brightening our table with her presence, started to play stick with him before dinner. Sigurd's way of playing stick was to bring you anything from a clothespin to a beanpole and coax you to throw it for him, holding it up lightly between his teeth for you to take. This time he had a piece of board with jagged ends, and our friend, whose own dog, a monstrously ugly and therefore supremely choice Boston Bull, would hang on to a stick with iron jaws while she tried in vain to wrench it from him, mistook the game. Sigurd held up his stick by one end, deftly balancing it in the air, and she, supposing that he would maintain his grip, rammed it suddenly down his throat. But Sigurd, eager for his run, at once let go, with the result that his throat was rather badly cut. He was surprised into one scream of pain and then silently tore about in circles, his tail low and rigid. His would-be playmate, grieved to the heart, had hurried for his Japanese water-bowl, but Sigurd would touch nothing that she brought. He went, instead, to a natural basin in the rock, always his favorite drinking-cup, where he lapped away at a prodigious rate, leaving a red stain on the water. After this he hid in the bushes, and it was not until dinner was nearly over that Sigurd came trotting in, ears and tail still depressed. Joy-of-Life, with the voice that was healing in itself, called him to her, but he passed us both by, going straight to the comparative stranger who had innocently hurt him. Settling on his haunches beside her chair, Sigurd gazed up mournfully but understandingly into her eyes and offered his magnanimous paw.

"You know I didn't mean to, and you came in to say so and to forgive me, you perfect little gentleman," she exclaimed, shaking the proffered paw as deferentially as if it had been the hand of Socrates. And that was the end of it. Sigurd coughed up a little blood and a few splinters that night, but he always met this lady, on her frequent comings, with a special, quiet courtesy, though he never invited her to a game of stick again.

Sigurd had one playmate who shamefully imposed upon his noble disposition. Nellie was an ancient spaniel, whose black curls were turning a dingy gray. She was our next neighbor and Sigurd's first love. Nellie was too fat and wheezy to romp, but she would sit, blinking approval, the center of a circle whose circumference was made by the golden gambols of our infatuated puppy. Around and around her he would caper, while she yawned and scratched--she was always a vulgar old thing--and took her exercise by proxy. We did not allow Nellie inside the house, to Sigurd's grieved surprise, but his dinner-dish was regularly set out of doors, by the back steps, and Nellie, every now and then, when her own rations had not been satisfactory or when Sigurd had peculiarly toothsome viands on his plate, would take advantage of his chivalry to play on him a low-down trick. Out of sight on the other side of the house, she would raise a wail of feigned distress, whereupon our gallant Volsung, just in the first enjoyment of his food, would lift his head, listen, even drop the piece of meat in his mouth and speed away to her rescue, running down one hill and up another in a vain endeavor to discover the villain of whom she had complained. Meanwhile Nellie, puffing with detestable delight, would waddle around to the doorsteps and gobble up the best of Sigurd's dinner. When she heard him bounding back, she discreetly shuffled off, so that Sigurd's ideal remained unspotted. Dear, faithful lad! To the last of her disgraceful days, he was old Nellie's champion and dupe.

All the while his development was going on apace. When he came to us he was already, like his brothers and sisters, proficient in giving the right paw, and could also, under protest, stand on his hind legs in a corner and "go roly-poly," a senseless performance, that he detested, on floors, but a natural and joyful gymnastic on the grass. He soon added to these accomplishments the agile arts of jumping over a stick and leaping through a hoop, though his tribulations with the hoop were many. He would brandish it over his head, run with it and trip in it, get his legs and body all wound up in it, and finally throw himself upon it and bite it into docility. He readily learned to catch, but his tastes were not extravagant and he would disdainfully drop in the thickets the rubber balls that were bought for him and grub up for himself some crooked branch or tough old chip that suited his purpose better.

Being educators ourselves, we did not think much of education as such and gave little attention to teaching him artificial tricks. Joy-of-Life was in favor of vocational training and decided that he must learn to guard. Her efforts nearly achieved success. For one proud fortnight Sigurd would, at the word of command, lie down and, resisting every temptation to leave his post, watch over a handkerchief or glove or parasol until he was called off by the same voice that had imposed the duty on him. It was I who ruined this excellent attainment by setting him, beside a pansy-bed agleam with sympathetic twinkles, to guard a hoptoad. To Sigurd's dismay and annoyance that brownie of the garden refused to play the game. How could a puppy remain at his post if his post would not remain at the puppy? Sigurd tried to paw the toad back into place, he remonstrated with it in a series of shrill barks and at last, when he heard us laughing at him, he indignantly repudiated, and forever, the whole business of guarding. It was then that Joy-of-Life accused me of being a demoralizing influence and for Sigurd's good reminded me of what I had quite forgotten and he had never known,--that he was not "our puppy" but hers.

"I want," said Joy-of-Life, bending her earnest look upon us both, "that Sigurd should grow up into a good dog, and how can he be a good dog if you turn duty into a joke?"

I felt so guilty that Sigurd hurried over to lick my hand.

"Whose dog are you, Gold of Ophir?" I asked, and Sigurd, with an impartial flourish of his tail, lay down exactly between us.

This delicate question was ultimately decided by no less an arbiter than Mother Goose. In pursuance of the theory that her immortal nonsense songs were written by Oliver Goldsmith--this is what is known as Literary Research--I had obtained leave from a Boston librarian, an indulgent spirit now gone to his reward, to take home for comparison with an accumulation of other texts a unique copy, exquisitely printed on creamy pages with wide margins and choicely bound in white and gold. It was an extraordinary grace of permission and, even in the act of passing that gem of a volume over, the librarian hesitated.

"It must not come to harm," he said, "for it is irreplaceable; but I know how you value books and I believe there are no children, to whom this might be a temptation, under your roof."

"Unfortunately, no; only a puppy."

"We will risk the puppy," he smiled,--but he did not know Sigurd.

I carried that book home as carefully as if it had been a nest of humming-bird's eggs. As I used it that evening at my desk, I propped it up at a far distance from any possible spatter of ink. Then I slipped it into a vacant space on the shelf of the revolving bookcase close at hand and, resolving to return it the next morning, turned to a good-night romp with the Volsung. We tried several new games without winning much popular applause. He was a failure as Wolf at the Door, because he barked so gleefully for admittance to the room where Joy-of-Life was brushing her mother's beautiful white hair and was so welcome when he came bursting in; nor did he shine as Mother Hubbard's dog, for his friend in the kitchen, Cecilia, who never let her cupboard go bare, had just filled the doughnut jar. So we practiced in secret for a few minutes on "a poetic recital" of Hickory Dickory Dock and then came forth to electrify the household. Taking a central seat, I repeated those talismanic syllables, at whose sound Sigurd jumped upon me, climbed up till his forepaws rested on the high top of the chair, in graphic illustration of the way the mouse ran up the clock, emitted an explosive bark when, shifting parts at a sudden pinch, he became for an instant the clock striking one, and then scrambled down with alacrity, a motion picture of the retreating mouse. This was no small intellectual exercise for a collie, and at the end of our one and only public performance he broke away and squeezed himself under the sofa, where he lay rubbing his poor, overwrought noddle against the coolest spot on the wall.

His mental energies had revived by morning and apparently he wanted to review his Hickory Dickory Dock, for he was in my study earlier than I and there, from all the rows of books on all the open shelves, he must needs pick out Mother Goose, even that unique copy de luxe. When I came in, there was Sigurd outstretched on his favorite rug, beside my desk, with the book between his forepaws, ecstatically engaged in chewing off one corner.

My gasp of horror brought Joy-of-Life speedily to the scene, and Sigurd, instantly aware that he had committed a transgression beyond precedent, slid unobtrusively away, his penitent tail tucked between his legs. We were too keenly concerned over the injury done to remember to punish him, but no further punishment than our obvious distress was needed. Never again would Sigurd touch a book or anything resembling a book. He had discovered, once for all, that he had no taste for literature.

"What can you do?" asked Joy-of-Life, distractedly trying to wipe that pulpy corner dry with her napkin. "This rich binding is ruined, but the margins are so broad that Sigurd--O Sigurd!--has not quite chewed through to the print."

"Nothing but make confession in sackcloth and ashes and pay what I have to pay," I answered gloomily. Then a wicked impulse prompted me to add:

"Of course, since it's your dog that has done the damage----"

"Sigurd is our dog," hastily interposed Joy-of-Life. "I give you half of him here and now, and we'll divide the damage."

So as I went in to inflict this shock upon the kind librarian I was not without a certain selfish consolation, for if I should have to pay over all my bank account, I would be getting my money's worth. The librarian bent his brows over that mangled volume, listened severely to my abject narration and not until his eye-glasses hopped off his nose did I realize that he was convulsed with laughter.

"What can I do?" I asked, too deeply contrite to resent his mirth.

He wiped his eyes, replaced his glasses, examined the book once more.

"Well!" he replied in a choking voice. "If it were possible to replace this volume, I should have to require you to do so at whatever cost. But there is no other copy to be had. Its aesthetic value is gone beyond repair. The text, fortunately, is intact. We shall have to cut the pages down to the print and bind them into plain covers. A pity, but it can't be helped. The circumstances do not seem to call for a fine, but the rebinding will cost you, I regret to say, twenty-five cents."

Choosing to deal generously with Joy-of-Life, I paid it all.

Although Sigurd's golden coat seemed but the outer shining of the gladness that possessed him, he had his share of the ills that flesh is heir to, the most serious being a well-nigh fatal attack of distemper. With human obtuseness, we did not realize at first that our collie was sick. We heard him making strangling sounds and thought he had swallowed too big a piece of bone. We started out, that Sunday afternoon, on a seven-mile walk, partly for the purpose of exercising Sigurd, and were a bit hurt by his most unwonted lack of enthusiasm. Instead of multiplying the miles by his usual process of racing in erratic circles around and around us and dashing off on far excursions over the fields on either side, he trotted soberly at heel, like the well-trained dog he never was. He moped, tail hanging, ears depressed, and soon began to fall behind. At the halfway turn he lay down and, for a time, flatly refused to budge. We laughed at his new game of Lazy Dog and relentlessly whistled him along. We were almost home, having passed through the village square, Sigurd lagging far in the rear, when a notorious bloodhound, out for his weekly constitutional, broke away from the steel chain by which his master was holding him and charged on our big puppy. Sigurd ran for his life, but the fleeter hound was close upon him. There were knots of men loafing about the square and, waiting for the next trolley car, there stood among them an old dame gayly attired in the colors of her native Erin. Sigurd's limited range of experience had led him to regard men either as secondary creatures who did what they were bid by the all-potent Lady of Cedar Hill or as parlor and piazza, ornaments enveloped in an unpleasant odor of tobacco. His peril called for strong protection, so, as we were still too distant, he took refuge behind the voluminous sea-green skirts of that decent Irish body and, dodging skillfully as she twirled and whirled, kept her as a buffer between himself and his enemy. Screeching to all the saints for deliverance, she was still striving in vain to escape from her awful position, when the owners of the dogs came panting up. The bloodhound's master collared him, none too soon, and beat him so savagely with the chain that we turned away from the sight to sympathize with Sigurd's involuntary defender and help her adjust her grass-green bonnet and veil. As for Sigurd, he had flashed out of the picture, but we found him at home, lying inert, exhausted, refusing water and biscuit, indifferent to bones. He sniffed regretfully at his Sunday dinner, but left it untasted.

An hour or two before dawn, simultaneously awakened by the sound of desperate coughing, Joy-of-Life and I met on the stairs and hurried down to find a croupy puppy, who, in his emergency, had again bitten his leash in two and climbed into his favorite--because forbidden--easy chair. As we leaned over him, Sigurd put up a paw to each of us, his suffering eyes expectant of relief. But we could devise no effectual help, and the veterinary, called in as early as we dared, regarded the invalid as a dangerous animal and handled him so roughly that, the moment Sigurd found himself released, he slipped out of the house and across the road to Nellie. Sorely disappointed in us, he tried to hide his yellow towering bulk on the other side of that grizzled little spaniel and waited, an exile from home, until the doctor had driven away.

For weeks we had a sick collie on our hands. He dreaded food and would squeeze himself into all impossible places when he saw either one of us coming with the prescribed "nourishment." As for medicine, he contracted that autumn an aversion to bottles which he never overcame. Years afterward, if Sigurd, about to enter a room, stopped short on the threshold and turned abruptly away, we looked around for the bottle.

One morning the gasps were very feeble. The veterinary told us the end was at hand. We took our earth-loving collie out from his dark hospital-nook in the house and laid him down among the asters and goldenrods on the wild land at the rear. The Lady of Cedar Hill had come over to see him once more. He was lying so still that we thought he would not move again, but at the sound of that beloved voice Sigurd stirred a feeble tail and breathed a ghostly echo of his lyric cry. Faint and hoarse though it was, there was the old glad recognition in it, and his first mistress, forgetting her intended precautions for the dogs at home, knelt down beside her Njal, comforting him with tender strokes and soft, caressing words. From that hour he began to mend, but so slowly that we were anxious about him all winter. Cruel pains would suddenly dart through him and he could never understand where they came from nor who did it. We would hear the sharp, distinctive cry that meant one of those pangs and then see Sigurd stagger up from his rug or cushion, look at it with deep reproach and cross to the furthest corner of the room. Once such a shoot of pain took him as he was standing by Joy-of-Life's gentle mother, his head propped on her knee, and the air of incredulous grief with which he drew back and gazed at her smote her to the soul. It was a matter of days before he could be coaxed to come to her again.

One of the discoveries of Sigurd's illness was the heart of our Swedish maid, Cecilia. Fresh from Ellis Island, buxom, comely, neat as a scoured rolling-pin, she regarded us with no more feeling than did her molding-board. We introduced her to the ways of an American household; we helped her with the speaking of English; we paid her wages; we were, in short, her Plymouth Rock, on which she stepped to her career in the New World. Best of all, we were palates and stomachs on which to try her sugary experiments, for it was her steadfast ambition to become an artist in dough with the view of securing a lucrative position as a pastry cook. However much we might further her own interests, her imperturbable coolness made it clear that as fellow-creatures we were nothing, but she humored every whim of that sick puppy, even letting him lie in her immaculate pantry when the restless fancy took him. Her love was lasting, too, for although, as soon as we had suffered her apprenticeship and begun to enjoy her perfected craft, she ruthlessly left us for "a hotel yob," she persisted for several years in sending Sigurd a dog-picture postcard every Christmas. We always gave him the cards, telling him they came from his friend Cecilia, and he pawed them politely, but inwardly deemed them a poor substitute for the cakes, tarts, puffs and crinkle-pastes of many curious flavors that had, for one brief season, made our At Homes famous in our "little academe," dropping delicious flakes for a thrifty tongue to garner under the table.

The distemper finally passed off in a trailing effect of St. Vitus' dance, which, again, our afflicted collie could not understand. On our springtide walks, his head, as he trotted in front, would suddenly be twitched to one side, as if we had jerked it by a rein. Apparently he thought we had, for invariably he came running back to see what we wanted of Sigurd.

The final, enduring result of this hard experience was an assured devotion. Sigurd had genially accepted us from the first as his people, but now, through the suffering and weakness, he had come to know us as his very own. The lyric cry still belonged to high romance, but after all those piteous weeks when he found his only comfort in lying close beside our feet--even, in extremity, upon them--he reserved certain welcomes and caresses for us alone. Ours was the long, silent pressure of the golden head against the knee and, in time of trouble, the swift touch of the tongue upon clouded faces, and ours the long, shining, intimate gaze that poured forth imperishable loyalty and love.

[The end]
Katharine Lee Bates's short story: Growing Up

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN