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Jan: A Dog and a Romance, a fiction by Alec John Dawson |
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Chapter 19. Discipline |
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_ CHAPTER XIX. DISCIPLINE Dick Vaughan's home-coming was something of an event for the district, as well as for Dr. Vaughan and the Upcroft household, and for Betty Murdoch and the Nuthill folk. He was a totally different person from the careless, casual, rather reckless Dick Vaughan who had left for Canada eighteen months before. Every one had liked the old Dick Vaughan who had disappeared; yet nobody now regretted the apparently final loss of him, and all were agreed in admiring the new Dick with more or less enthusiasm. Already he had won promotion in the fine corps to which he belonged, and his scarlet uniform coat had a stripe on one sleeve. But this was a small matter--though Dr. Vaughan was prouder of it than of any of his own long list of learned degrees and other honors--by comparison with the other and unofficial promotion Dick had won in the scale of manhood. No uniform was needed to indicate this. One became aware of it the moment one set eyes upon him. It showed itself in the firm lines of his thin, tanned face, in the carriage of his shoulders, the swing of his walk, the direct, steady gaze of his eyes, and the firm, assured tone of his voice. Always a sportsman and a good fellow, Dick Vaughan was now a full man, a man handled and made; a strong, disciplined man, decently modest, but perfectly conscious of his strength, and easily able to control other men. This was what Canada and membership of the Royal North-west Mounted Police had done for Dick Vaughan in a short eighteen months. For young and healthy men there is perhaps no other country which has more to give than Canada in the shape of discipline; of that kind of mental, moral, and physical tonic which makes for swift, sure character-development, and the stiffening and bracing of the human fibers. In English life there has been of late years a rather serious scarcity of this tonic influence. Canada is very rich in her supply of it; but the tonic is too potent for the use of weaklings. Then, too, there were the R.N.W.M.P. influences, representing a concentrated distillation of the same tonic. The traditions of this fine force form a great power for the shaping and making of men. First, they have a strongly testing and selective influence. They winnow out the weeds among those who come under their influence with quite extraordinary celerity and thoroughness. Those who come through the selective process satisfactorily may be relied upon as surely as the grain-buyer may rely on the grade of wheat which comes through its tests as "No. 1, hard." The trooper who comes honorably out of his first year in the R.N.W.M.P. is quite certainly "No. 1, hard," as much to be relied upon as any other single product of the prairies. "It is not only that the man in any way weak is quite unable to stand the steady test of R.N.W.M.P. life. Apart from that, no blatherskite can endure it; no vain boaster, no aggressive bully, no slacker, and no humbug of any kind can possibly keep his end up in the force." So wrote a widely experienced and keen-witted "old-timer," in 1908, and he was perfectly right. For example, the R.N.W.M.P. man who made an unnecessary use or display of weapons, by way of enforcing his authority, would be laughed and ridiculed out of the force. The thing has been done, and will be done again, if necessary. Aided only by the weight of the fine traditions belonging to his uniform, the R.N.W.M.P. man is expected to be capable, without any fuss at all, of arresting a couple of notorious toughs, and, with his naked hands, of taking them away with him from among the roughest sort of crowd of their associates. And in the R.N.W.M.P., if a man does not show himself consistently capable of doing that which the traditions of the force say is to be expected of him, his place in the force will know him no more. There are no failures in the R.N.W.M.P.--they are not allowed. The force could not afford to allow them, because their existence--the existence of any of them--would weaken R.N.W.M.P. prestige; and that prestige is the armor without which the work of the force would be utterly impossible; not merely for the average trooper, but even for an individual possessed of the combined genius of a Napoleon, a Sherlock Holmes, and an Admirable Crichton. As things stand, the maintenance of law and order in the western and north-western prairies, with their vast, trackless stretches of as yet almost uninhabited territory, is fully equal to the level attained in London or New York. The law is quite as much respected there; infractions of it are quite as surely punished; peace and security are to the full as well preserved. This truth is speedily understood even by the least desirable brand of foreign immigrant. The fugitive from justice reckons his chances considerably better in any other place than the territory of the Riders of the Plains. And all this because of a handful of mounted men in red coats. "The fact is," said a Minnesota farmer to the present writer, "it don't matter a cent what sort of a pull a man has, how many guns he carries, or how many dollars are behind him; if he breaks the law up there in the North-west, he knows he's just got to be jailed for it, sure as he's alive. It may take a day, or it may take a year. It may cost the authorities a dollar, or it may cost 'em a million, and a life or two thrown in. But that tough is just going to be jailed, and he durned well knows it. That's what the R.N.W.M.P. means to the North-west; and you take it from me, it's a pretty big thing to mean." It is a big thing. And what makes it possible for that handful of redcoats is not money, or guns, or numbers, but a solid, four-square foundation of irreproachable prestige; an unspotted tradition of incorruptible honesty, tirelessness, braveness, fairness, and real decency. This is the reason why no failures are allowed in the R.N.W.M.P.; this is the reason why eighteen months of service in that corps, of a sort that earns promotion, means so much for the man who accomplishes it. It demands a great deal of him. It gives him an indisputable title to complete manhood. * * * * * Though the point was often discussed, it never was made quite clear who first suggested that Jan should accompany Dick Vaughan when, after three short weeks at home, he set out again for the West. The Master privately believed the first suggestion came from him. Dick was sure he had begun by begging for the privilege. Betty cherished the idea that her gift was unsought and quite spontaneous. At all events, once the thing was decided, nobody concerned doubted for a moment the fitness of it. Betty's own arrangements may have had something to do with it. For the Master and the Mistress had set their hearts upon Betty having a season in London and a month or two on the Continent, in part with her Nuthill friends, and, for a portion of the time, with another relative. This made the prospect of parting for a time with Jan a good deal easier. Then, again, Dick Vaughan had certainly "said a word" to Betty now. He had, indeed, said a good deal to her. And there was one little affirmative word she had given him which he held more preciously significant than all the rest of the world's oratory put together. It was Dick Vaughan's own suggestion that he should serve a further probationary term. It was his own idea that he should earn the Master's blessing by winning sergeant's rank in the R.N.W.M.P.; and that not till then should he allow his father to set him up in England. His decision in this delighted Dr. Vaughan and confirmed the Master in his faith. It meant a further term of absence, but Betty Murdoch was sensible enough to be proud of the pride behind Dick's plan; and thus all were agreed. Jan's opinion in the matter could hardly be ascertained; but no one who had ever seen Dick and Betty on the Downs with Jan and Finn, and noted the wonderful responsiveness of the young hound to Dick's control, would have entertained any doubt about this. Dick's mastery of animals had always been remarkable; his hold upon their affections had been one of the most striking characteristics of his life. And in this, as in other matters, his experiences in the West had taught him a good deal. At home in Sussex, and even as a youngster, it had been recognized that Dick Vaughan could get rather more out of an average horse than any one else in the district. On the prairies he had so far developed this gift of his that his charger would lie down on the ground at a word from him, and remain lying, as though dead, without ever injuring or displacing his saddle, until given the word to rise; and this even though his neck were used as a gun-rest, and Dick's rifle fired from it. Dick's horses in Canada--and he trained many--required no tethering. They would remain, all day if need be, upon the exact spot at which he bade them stand. They would push and nuzzle a man along a road, and never upset him. They would gallop, unridden, in any given direction, at the word of command, and halt as if shot at the sound of Dick's voice. He actually taught a mare to leave her foal and come to him at the word of command. Not the wildest and most vicious of broncos could resist him when he set his mind to their subjugation, yet he wore drilled sixpences in place of rowels in his spurs, and rarely carried a whip; though on certain occasions he might borrow one for a specific use. During his walks on the Downs with Betty and the two hounds he taught Jan to lie down, stand to attention, gallop in any direction, wheel and return without hesitation; and all this upon the instant of the word of command, or in obedience to a wave of the hand. He arranged for Betty to take Jan away with her for, say, a quarter of a mile, and then, short of holding him, to use every persuasion she could to keep him beside her. Then Dick would give a long call, and then another. It was almost uncanny to see, from the expression on his face, the struggle going on in Jan's mind. But the end was always the same. The second call took him away at the gallop, even from Betty. Then Jan was taught to remain on guard over any object, such as a stick, a glove, or a cap, while Dick and Betty, and Finn, too, went right away out of sight for, it might be, half an hour. Jan learned these things readily, and with apparent ease. Yet his only rewards were an occasional caress and words of praise. And, apparently, there were no punishments in Dick's educational system. At least he never struck Jan. He really seemed so to influence the young hound that the withholding of praise became a sharp rebuke. Jan himself had no notion why he allowed Dick to school him, or why he yielded this man a measure of obedience and instant devotion that he had given to no one else. The basis of Dick's power was the exceptional gift of magnetism he had--the special kind of magnetism which makes for the subjugation of their wills and personalities, be they human or animal. But, over and above this gift, Dick had faultless patience with animals. He never gave an order without making perfectly certain that it was understood. And he never betrayed the smallest hint of indecision or lack of assured confidence. "Stay--right--there--Jan," he would say. "Guard--that." His voice was low, his speech slow, emphatic, distinct. It was a compelling form of speech, and yet, withal, hardly ever harsh or even peremptory. And when, in the earlier stages, he had occasion to say: "No, no; that's no good. That won't do at all, Jan"; or, "You've got to do a heap better than that, Jan," the words or their tone seemed to cut the dog as it might have been with a whip-lash. You could see Jan flinch; not cowed or disheartened, as the dogs trained by public performers often are, but touched to the very quick of his pride, and hungrily eager to do better next time and win the low-voiced: "Good dog! That's fine! Good dog, Jan!" with, it may be, a caressing pat on the head or a gentle rubbing of both ears. Jan did not know why he learned, why he loved the lessons and the teacher, why he obeyed so swiftly, or why praise filled him to the throat with glad, swelling pride, while the withholding of it, or an expression of disapproval, sent his flag down between his hocks, and his spirits with it, to zero. Jan did not know, but he was merely exemplifying a law as old as the hills. The Israelites found out that righteousness was happiness, and that no joy existed outside of it. Righteousness--do ye right--is another word for discipline. The proudest and the happiest people in the world are the best disciplined people. Perfect discipline is righteousness for righteousness' sake. According to his lights, obedience to Dick was righteousness for Jan. Hence his joyous pride in the progress of his education. No form of self-indulgence could yield Jan (or any one else) a tithe of the satisfaction he derived from this subordination of himself. His greatest trial, and, by that token, once he really understood it, his greatest source of pride, came in the severe lesson of being sent home in the early stages of a morning's walk. First it was from the garden gate; then from the orchard gate in the lane; and later from the open Down, perhaps half a mile or more away. He would be gamboling to and fro with Finn, exulting in the joy of out of doors, and swift and unanswerable would come the order to return home and wait. Finn was to go on and enjoy the ramble. Jan, for no fault, was to go home alone to wait. And in the end he did it with no pause for protest or hesitation, and at length with no regret, all that being swallowed up by his immense pride in his own understanding and perfect subordination. He might have to wait ten minutes or an hour or more on the door-step at Nuthill; but it was notable that he never went unrewarded for this particular performance of duty. He was always specially commended and caressed for this; and he never altogether lost a ramble by it, for Dick would make a point of taking him out again, either at once or at some time during the same day. It was a stiff lesson to learn, this; and that was why, once learned, the practice of it was highly stimulating to Jan's self-respect and dignity of bearing. Upon the whole, in the course of those three crowded weeks of holiday happiness and courting Dick Vaughan managed to pass on to Jan a quite appreciable simulacrum of all the benefits which had made so markedly for his own development during the preceding eighteen months. And most notably was Jan developed in the process. "We gave Jan a good physique, didn't we, Betty?" said the Master, admiringly; "but in three weeks this wizard has made a North-west Mounted Policeman of him, absolutely fully equipped, bar speech and a uniform!" "Oh, well," replied Dick, with a laugh, "we don't reckon to be very much as speakers out West, you know; and for uniform, Jan's black and iron-gray coat is good tough wear, and will outlast the best of tunics, and turn snow or hail or rain a deal better. Won't it, Jan?" _ |
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