Aileen Aroon, A Memoir

I looked down as I spoke, and patted the head of my champion Newfoundland Theodore Nero, who had entered unseen and was gazing up in my face with his bonnie hazel eyes as if he comprehended every word of the conversation.

“Poor Nero,” I said, “I should have liked to have had Sable just to be a mate and companion for you, old boy.”

The great dog looked from me to my wife, and back again at me, and wagged his enormous tail.

“I’ve got you, master,” he seemed to say, “and my dear mistress. What more could I wish?”

Just as I pen these lines, gentle reader, two little toddlers are coming home from forenoon school, with slates under their arms; but when the above conversation took place, no toddlers were on the books, as they say in the navy. We were not long married. It was nine long years ago, or going on that way. The previous ten years of my life had been spent at sea; but service in Africa had temporarily ruined my health, so that invaliding on a modicum of half-pay seemed more desirable than active service on full.

These were the dear old days of poverty and romance. Retirement from active duty afloat and – marriage. It is too often the case that he who marries for love has to work for siller. Henceforward, literature was to be my staff, if not the crutch on which I should limp along until “my talents should be recognised,” as my wife grandly phrased it.

“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough,” says the greatest William that ever lived. There is nothing to be ashamed of in poverty, and just as little to boast about. Naval officers who retire young are all poor. I know some who once upon a time were used to strut the quarter-deck or ship’s bridge in blue and gold, and who are now, God help them, selling tea or taking orders for wine.

“With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I squeezed the hand of my bride at the altar as I spoke the words, and well she knew the pressure was meant to recall to her mind a fact of which she was already cognisant, that “all my worldly goods” consisted of a Cremona fiddle, and my Newfoundland dog, and my old sea-chest; but the bottom of that was shaky.

But to resume my story.

“Hurrah!” I shouted some mornings after, as I opened the letters. “Here’s news, Dot. We’re going to have Sable after all. Hear how D. O’C writes. He says —

“‘Though I have never met you, judging from what I have seen of your writings, I would rather you accepted Sable as a gift, than that any one else should have my favourite for money,’ and so on and so forth.”

These are not the exact words of the letter, but they convey the exact meaning.

Sable was to come by boat from Ireland, and I was to go to Bristol, a distance of seventy miles, to meet her, for no one who values the life and limbs of a dog, would trust to the tender mercies of the railway companies.

“I’ll go with you, Gordon,” said my dear friend, Captain D – . Like myself, he had been a sailor, but unmarried, for, as he used to express it, “he had pulled up in time.” He had taken Punch’s advice to people about to marry – “Don’t.”

Captain D – didn’t.

“Well, Frank,” I said, “I’ll be very glad indeed of your company.”

So off we started the night before, for the boat would be in the basin at Hotwells early the next morning. The scene and the din on board that Irish boat beggars description, and I do not know which made the most noise, the men or the pigs. I think if anything the pigs did. It seemed to me that evil spirits had entered into the pigs, and they wanted to throw themselves into the sea. I believe evil spirits had entered into the men, too; some of them, at all events, smelt of evil spirits.

“Is it a thremendeous big brute ’av a black dog you’ve come to meet, sorr?” said the cook to me.

“Yes,” I replied, “a big black dog, but not a brute.”

“Well, poor baste, sorr, it’s in my charge she has been all the way, and she’s had lashin’s to ate and to drink. Thank you koindly, sir, and God bless your honour. Yonder she is, sorr, tied up foreninst the horse-box, and she’s been foighting with the pigs all the noight, sorr.”

She certainly had been fighting with the pigs, for she herself was wounded, and the ears of some of the pigs were in tatters.

Sable was looking very sour and sulky. She certainly had not relished the company she had been placed among. She permitted me to lead her on shore; then she gave me one glance, and cast one towards my friend.

“You’ll be the man that has come for me,” she said; she did not say “the gentleman.”

“Who is your fat friend?” she added.

We both caressed her without eliciting the slightest token on her part of any desire to improve our acquaintance.

“You may pat me,” she told us, “and call me pet names as much as you please. I won’t bite you as I did the pigs, but I don’t care a bone for either of you, and, what is more, I never intend to. I have left my heart in Ireland; my master is there.”

“Come on, Sable,” I said; “we’ll go now and have some breakfast.”

“Don’t pull,” said Sable; “I’m big enough to break the chain and bolt if I wish to. I’ll go with you, but I’ll neither be dragged nor driven.”

No dog ever had a better breakfast put before her, but she would not deign even to look at it.

“Yes,” she seemed to say, “it is very nice, and smells appetising, and I’m hungry, too; a bite of a sow’s ear is all I’ve had since I left home; but for all that I don’t mean to eat; I’m going to starve myself to death, that is what I’m going to do.”

It is very wrong and unfair to bring home any animal, whether bird or beast, to one’s house without having previously made everything needful ready for its reception. Sable’s comfort had not been forgotten, and on her arrival we turned her into the back yard, where, in a small wooden house, was a bed of the cleanest straw, to say nothing of a dish of wholesome food, and a bowl of the purest water. The doors to the yard were locked, but no chain was put on the new pet, for the walls were seven feet high or nearly so, and her safety was thus insured.

So we thought, but, alas for our poor logic! We had yet to learn what Sable’s jumping capabilities were. When I wrote next day, and told her old master that Sable had leapt the high wall and fled, the reply was that he regretted very much not having told me, that she was the most wonderful dog to jump ever he had seen or heard tell of.

Meanwhile Sable was gone. But where or whither? The country is well-wooded, but there are plenty of sheep in it. Judging from Sable’s pig-fighting qualities, I felt sure she would not starve, if she chose to feed on sheep. But one sheep a day, even for a week, would make a hole in my quarter’s half-pay, and I shuddered to think of the little bill Sable might in a very short time run me up. No one had seen Sable. So days passed; then came a rumour that some school children had been frightened nearly out of their little wits by the appearance of an enormous bear, in a wood some miles from our cottage.

My hopes rose; the bear must be Sable. So an expedition was organised to go in search of her. The rank and file of this expedition consisted of schoolboys. I myself was captain, and Theodore Nero, the Newfoundland, was first lieutenant.

We were successful. My heart jumped for joy as I saw the great dog in the distance. But she would not suffer any one to come near her. That was not her form. I must walk on and whistle, and she would follow. I was glad enough to close with the offer, and gladder still when we reached home before she changed her mind and went off again.

Chaining now became imperative until Sable became reconciled to her situation in life, until I had succeeded in taming her by kindness.

This was by no means an easy task. For weeks she never responded to either kind word or caress, but one day Sable walked up to me as I sat writing, and, much to my surprise, offered me her great paw.

“Shake hands,” she seemed to say as she wagged her tail, “Shake hands. You’re not half such a bad fellow as I first took you for.”

My friend, Captain D – , was delighted, and we must needs write at once to Sable’s old master to inform him of the unprecedented event.

Sable became every day more friendly and loving in her own gentle undemonstrative and quiet fashion. But as yet she had never barked.

One day, however, on throwing a stick to Nero, she too ran after it, and on making pretence to throw it again, Sable began to caper. Not gracefully perhaps, but still it was capering, and finally she barked.

When I told friend Frank he was as much overjoyed as I was. I suggested writing at once to Ireland and making the tidings known.

“A letter, Gordon,” said my friend emphatically, “will not meet the requirements of the case. Let us telegraph. Let us wire, thus – ‘Sable has barked.’”

The good dog’s former master was much pleased at the receipt of the information.

“She will do now,” he wrote; “and I’m quite easy in my mind about her.”

Now all this may appear very trivial to some of my readers, but there really was for a time, a probability that Sable would die of sheer grief, as, poor dog, she eventually succumbed to consumption.

We were, if possible, kinder to Sable, or Aileen Aroon, as she was now called, than ever. She became the constant companion of all our walks and rambles, and developed more and more excellences every week. Without being what might be called brilliant, Aileen was clever and most teachable. She never had been a trained or educated dog. Theodore Nero had, and whether he took pity on his wife’s ignorance or not, I cannot say, but he taught her a very great deal she never knew anything about before.

Here is a proof that Aileen’s reasoning powers were of no mean order. When Master Nero wanted a tit-bit he was in the habit of making a bow for it. The bow consisted in a graceful inclination or lowering of the chest and head between the outstretched fore-paws. Well, Aileen was not long in perceiving that the performing of this little ceremony always procured for her husband a morsel of something nice to eat, that “To boo, and to boo, and to boo,” was the best of policies.

She therefore took to it without any tuition, and to see those “twa dogs,” standing in front of me when a biscuit or two were on the board, and booing, and booing, and booing, was a sight to have made a dray-horse smile.

I am sure that Nero soon grew exceedingly fond of his new companion, and she of him in her quiet way.