The Breadwinner

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Title:     The Breadwinner
Author: Perceval Gibbon [More Titles by Gibbon]

The noonday bivouac was in a shady place nigh-hand the road, where a group of solemn trees made a shadow on the dusty grass. It was a day of robust heat; the sky arched cloudless over Sussex, and the road was soft with white dust that rose like smoke under the feet. Trotter no sooner saw the place than he called a halt and dropped his bundle. The Signor smiled lividly and followed suit; Bill, the dog, lay down forthwith and panted.

"Look at 'im!" said Trotter. "Just look at 'im, will yer! 'E ain't carried no bundle; 'e ain't got to unpack no grub. And there 'e lies, for us to wait on 'im."

"Where ees da beer?" demanded the Signor, who had the immediate mind.

The word drew Trotter from his wrongs, and together the men untied the shabby bundles and set forth their food.

They made a queer picture in that quiet place of English green. Trotter still wore tights, with hobnailed boots to walk in and a rusty billycock hat for shelter to his head. He somewhat clung to this garb, though his tumbling days were over. One had only to look at his bloated, pouchy face to see how drink and sloth had fouled his joints and slacked his muscles. Never again could he spread the drugget in a rustic village street and strut about it on his hands for the edification of a rustic audience. But the uniform he still wore; he seemed to think it gave him some claim to indulgent notice. The Signor, in his own way, was not less in contrast with his background. His lean, predatory face and capacious smile went fitly with the shabby frock coat and slouched hat he affected. He carried a fiddle under his arm, but the most he could do was strum on it with his thumb. Together, they made a couple that anyone would look twice at, and no one care to meet in a lonely place.

Bill, the dog, shared none of their picturesque quality. An uglier dog never went footsore. A dozen breeds cropped out here and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little crowd, Trotter would introduce Bill.

"Lydies and gents all," he would say, "with yore kind permission, I will now introduce to yer the world-famous wolf 'ound Boris, late of the Barnum menagerie in New York. 'E will commence 'is exhibition of animal intelligence by waltzin' to the strines of Yankee Doodle on the vi'lin."

Then the Signor would strum on two strings of the fiddle, smiling the while a smile that no woman should see, and Bill would waltz laboriously on his hind legs. After that he would walk on his front legs, throw somersaults, find a hidden handkerchief, and so on. And between each piece of clowning, he would go round with Trotter's hat to collect coppers. Bill was an honest dog, and a fairly big one as well, and when a man tried to ignore the hat, he had a way of drawing back his lips from his splendid teeth which by itself was frequently worth as much to the treasury as all his other tricks put together. But the truth of it was, it was a feeble show, a scanty, pitiful show; and only the gross truculence of Trotter and the venomous litheness of the Signor withheld the average yokel from saying so flatly.

But it gave them enough to live on and drink on. At any rate, Trotter grew fat and the Signor grew thinner. Bill depended on what they had left when they were satisfied; it was little enough. He begged at cottages on his own account, sometimes; sitting up in the attitude of mendicancy till something was thrown to him. Occasionally, too, he stole fowls or raided a butcher's shop. Then Trotter and the Signor would disown him vociferously to the bereaved one, and hasten on to come up with him before he had eaten it all. He preferred being beaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fed full. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dusty stages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote from each other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk any other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is still going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ordinary dog limp and sorry. And then, when every bone in him was aching, a wretched village might poke up at an elbow of the way, and there would be dancing to do and his whole fatuous repertoire to accomplish, while his legs were soft under him with weariness.

Trotter took his heavy boots off; he threw one at Bill.

It was a pleasant spot. Where they sat, in a bay of shade, they could see a far reach of rich land, bright in the sunshine and dotted with wood, stretching back to where the high shoulder of the downs shut out the sea.

The two men ate in much contentment, passing the bottle to and fro.

Bill waited for them to have done and fling him his share. In common with all Bohemians, he liked regular meals.

"That dog's goin' silly," said Trotter, looking at him where he lay.

"Oh, him!" said the Signor.

"He's bin loafin' a furlong be'ind all the mornin'," said Trotter. "Yer know if he was to get lazy, it 'ud be a poor lookout for us. He's bin spoilt, that dog 'as spoilt with indulgence. Soon as we stop for a spell oh, he plops down on 'is belly and 'angs on for us to chuck 'im a bit of grub. Might be a man by the ways of 'im, 'stead of a dog. Now I don't 'old with spoilin' dogs."

"Pass da beer," requested the Signor.

Bill looked up with concern, for Trotter was filling his pipe; the meal was at an end.

"Yus, yer can look," snarled Trotter. "You'll wait, you will."

He began to pack up the bread and meat again in the towel where it belonged.

"Think you've got yer rights, don't yer?" he growled, as he swept the fragments together. "No dog comes them games on me. Hey, get out, ye brute!"

Bill had walked over and was now helping himself to the food that lay between Trotter's very hands.

Trotter clenched a bulging red fist and hauled off to knock him away. But Bill had some remainder of the skill, as well as the ferocity, of the fighting dog in him. He snapped sideways in a purposeful silence, met the swinging fist adroitly, and sank his fine teeth cruelly in the fat wrist.

"Hey! Signor, Signor!" howled Trotter. "Kick 'im orf, can't yer! Ow, o-o-ow!"

Bill let him go as the Signor approached, but the kick that was meant for him spent itself in the air. Again he snapped, with that sideways striking action of the big bony head, and the Signor shrieked like a woman and sprang away.

Bill watched the pair of them for half a minute, as they took refuge among the trees, and both saw the glint of his strong teeth as he stared after them. Then he finished the food at his ease, while they cursed and whimpered from a distance.

"'E's mad," moaned Trotter. "'Es 'ad a stroke. An' we'll get hydrophobia from 'im as like as not."

He nursed his bitten wrist tenderly.

"Look at my laig!" babbled the Signor. "It is a sacred bite, an' all-a da trouser tore. What da hell you fool wid da dog for, you big fool?"

"'E was pinchin' the grub," growled Trotter. "E's mad. Look at 'im, lyin' down on my coat. 'Ere, Bill! Goo' dog, then. Good ole feller!"

Bill took no notice of the blandishments of Trotter, but presently he rose and strolled off to where a little pond stood in the corner of a field.

"'E's drinkin'," reported Trotter, who had stolen from cover to make observations. "So 'e can't be mad. Mad dogs won't look at water. Go into fits if they sees it. 'Ere, Signor, let's make a grab for those bundles before 'e gets back."

Bill rejoined them while they were yet stuffing their shabby possessions together.

The Signor moved behind Trotter and Trotter picked up a boot. But Bill was calm and peaceful again. He lay down in the grass and wagged his tail cheerfully.

"Bill, ole feller," said Trotter, in tones of conciliation, and Bill wagged again.

"'Ell, I can't make nothing of it," confessed Trotter blankly. "Must have gone sort o' temp'ry insane, like the sooicides. But well, we'll be even with 'im before all's over."

And the lean Signor's sidelong look at the dog was full of menace.

They reached another village before dark, a village with a good prosperous alehouse, and here Bill showed quite his old form. He waltzed, he threw somersaults, he found handkerchiefs, he carried the hat; his docility was all that Trotter and the Signor could have asked. They cleared one and sevenpence out of his tricks, and would have stayed to drink it; but Bill walked calmly on up the road and barely gave them time enough to buy food.

They cursed him lavishly; the Signor raved in a hot frenzy; but they dared not lose him. The dog led them at an easy pace and they labored after him furiously, while a great pale moon mounted in the sky and the soft night deepened over the fields.

He let them down at last at an end of grass where a few of last year's straw ricks afforded lodging for the night. Both the men were tired enough to be glad of the respite and they sank down in the shadow of a rick with little talk.

"It gets me," Trotter said. "The dog's a danger. 'E ought to be drownded."

The Signor snarled. "An' us?" he demanded. "We go to work, eh? You pick da grass-a to make-a da hay and me I drive-a da cart, eh? Oh, Trottair, you fool!"

"'Ere, let's 'ave some grub and stow the jaw for a bit," said Trotter.

He had bread and meat, bought in a hurry at the tail of the village while Bill receded down the road.

As soon as he laid it bare, Bill growled.

"T'row heem some, queeck," cried the Signor.

Bill caught the loaf and settled down to it with an appetite. Trotter stared at him with a gape.

"Well, blow me!" he said. "'Ave we come to feedin' the bloomin' dog before we feeds ourselves? 'As the beggar struck for that? I s'pose 'e'll be wantin' wages next."

"Oh, shutta da gab!" snapped the Signor.

"That's all very well," retorted Trotter. "But I'm an Englishman, I am. You're only a furriner; you're used to bein' put upon. But I'm--."

Bill growled again and rose to his feet. Trotter tossed him a piece of meat.

All that was long ago. Now if you stray through the South of England during the months between May and October, you may yet meet Bill and his companions. Trotter still wears tights, but he is thinner and much more wholesome to see; but the Signor has added a kind of shiny servility to his courtly Italian manner.

Bill is sleek and fat.

And now, when they come to rest at noonday, you will see, if you watch them, that before Trotter takes his boots off he feeds the dog. And the Signor fetches him water.

[The end]
Perceval Gibbon's short story: The Breadwinner

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