Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 705, June 30, 1877

Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 705, June 30, 1877
Various

Various

Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 705, June 30, 1877

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH

The fire burns cheerily on the hearth, the great logs crackle and flare up the wide chimney, up which it is my wont to say you could drive a coach-and-four. I draw my chair nearer to it with a shiver. 'What a night!' I say.

'Is it still snowing?' asks my wife, who sits opposite to me, her books and work on the table beside her.

'Fast. You can scarcely see a yard before you.'

'Heaven help any poor creature on the moor to-night!' says she.

'Who would venture out? It began snowing before dark, and all the people about know the danger of being benighted on the moor in a snow-storm.'

'Yes. But I have known people frozen to death hereabouts before now.'

My wife is Scotch, and this pleasant house in the Highlands is hers. We are trying a winter in it for the first time, and I find it excessively cold and somewhat dull. Mentally I decide that in future we will only grace it with our presence during the shooting season. Presently I go to the window and look out; it has ceased snowing, and through a rift in the clouds I see a star.

'It is beginning to clear,' I tell my wife, and also inform her that it is past eleven. As she lights her candle at a side-table I hear a whining and scratching at the front-door.

'There is Laddie loose again,' says she. 'Would you let him in, dear?'

I did not like facing the cold wind, but could not refuse to let in the poor animal. Strangely enough, when I opened the door and called him, he wouldn't come. He runs up to the door and looks into my face with dumb entreaty; then he runs back a few steps, looking round to see if I am following; and finally, he takes my coat in his mouth and tries to draw me out.

'Laddie won't come in,' I call out to my wife. 'On the contrary, he seems to want me to go out and have a game of snow-ball with him.'

She throws a shawl round her and comes to the door. The collie was hers before we were married, and she is almost as fond of him, I tell her, as she is of Jack, our eldest boy.

'Laddie, Laddie!' she calls; 'come in, sir.' He comes obediently at her call, but refuses to enter the house, and pursues the same dumb pantomime he has already tried on me.

'I shall shut him out, Jessie,' I say. 'A night in the snow won't hurt him;' and I prepare to close the door.

'You will do nothing of the kind!' she replies with an anxious look; 'but you will rouse the servants at once, and follow him. Some one is lost in the snow, and Laddie knows it.'

I laugh. 'Really, Jessie, you are absurd. Laddie is a sagacious animal, no doubt, but I cannot believe he is as clever as that. How can he possibly know whether any one is lost in the snow, or not?'

'Because he has found them, and come back to us for help. Look at him now.'

I cannot but own that the dog seems restless and uneasy, and is evidently endeavouring to coax us to follow him; he looks at us with pathetic entreaty in his eloquent eyes. 'Why won't you believe me?' he seems to ask.

'Come,' she continues; 'you know you could not rest while there was a possibility of a fellow-creature wanting your assistance. And I am certain Laddie is not deceiving us.'

What is a poor hen-pecked man to do? I grumble and resist and yield; as I have often grumbled and resisted and yielded before, and as I doubtless often shall again.

'Laddie once found a man in the snow before, but he was dead,' Jessie says, as she hurries off to fill a flask with brandy, and get ready some blankets for us to take with us. In the meantime I rouse the servants. They are all English, with the exception of Donald the gardener, and I can see that they are scoffingly sceptical of Laddie's sagacity, and inwardly disgusted at having to turn out of their warm beds and face the bitter winter's night.

'Dinna trouble yersels,' I hear old Donald say. 'The mistress is right eneugh. Auld Laddie is cleverer than mony a Christian, and will find something in the snaw this night.'

'Don't sit up, Jessie,' I say as we start; 'we may be out half the night on this wild-goose chase.'

'Follow Laddie closely,' is the only answer she makes.

The dog springs forward with a joyous bark, constantly looking back to see if we are following. As we pass through the avenue gates and emerge on to the moor, the moon struggles for a moment through the driving clouds, and lights up with a sickly gleam the snow-clad country before us. 'It's like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, sir,' says John the coachman confidentially, 'to think as we should find anybody on such a night as this! Why, in some places the snow is more than a couple o' feet thick, and it goes again' reason to think that a dumb animal would have the sense to come home and fetch help.'

'Bide a wee, bide a wee,' says old Donald. 'I dinna ken what your English dugs can do; but a collie, though it hasna been pleasing to Providence to give the creatur the gift o' speech, can do mony mair things than them that wad deride it.'

'I ain't a deridin' of 'em,' says John. 'I only say as how if they be so very clever, I've never seen it.'

'Ye wull, though, ye wull,' says old Donald, as he hurries forward after Laddie, who has now settled down into a swinging trot, and is taking his way straight across the loneliest part of the bleak moor. The cold wind almost cuts us in two, and whirls the snow into our faces, nearly blinding us. My finger-tips are becoming numbed, icicles hang from my moustache and beard, and my feet and legs are soaking wet, even through my shooting-boots and stout leather leggings.

The moon has gone in again, and the light from the lantern we carry is barely sufficient to shew us the inequalities in the height of the snow, by which we are guessing at our path. I begin to wish I had staid at home. 'L'homme propose, mais la femme dispose,' I sigh to myself; and I begin to consider whether I may venture to give up the search (which I have undertaken purely to satisfy my wife, for I am like John, and won't believe in Laddie), when suddenly I hear a shout in front of me, and see Donald, who has all the time been keeping close to Laddie, drop on his knees and begin digging wildly in the snow with his hands. We all rush forward. Laddie has stopped at what appears to be the foot of a stunted tree, and after scratching and whining for a moment, sits down and watches, leaving the rest to us. What is it that appears when we have shovelled away the snow? A dark object. Is it a bundle of rags? Is it – or alas! was it a human being? We raise it carefully and tenderly, and wrap it in one of the warm blankets with which my wife's forethought has provided us. 'Bring the lantern,' I say huskily; and John holds it over the prostrate form of, not as we might have expected, some stalwart shepherd of the hills, but over that of a poor shrivelled, wrinkled, ragged old woman. I try to pour a little brandy down the poor old throat, but the teeth are so firmly clenched that I cannot.

'Best get her home as quickly as may be, sir; the mistress will know better what to do for her nor we do, if so be the poor creature is not past help,' says John, turning instinctively, as we all do in sickness or trouble, to woman's aid.

So we improvise a sort of hammock of the blankets, and gently and tenderly the men prepare to carry their poor helpless burden over the snow.

'I am afraid your mistress will be in bed,' I say, as we begin to retrace our steps.

'Never fear, sir,' says Donald with a triumphant glance at John; 'the mistress will be up and waitin' for us. She kens Laddie didna bring us out in the snaw for naething.'

'I'll never say nought about believing a dawg again,' says John, gracefully striking his colours. 'You were right and I was wrong, and that's all about it; but to think there should be such sense in a animal passes me!'

As we reach the avenue gate I despatch one of the men for the doctor, who fortunately lives within a stone's-throw of us, and hurry on myself to prepare my wife for what is coming. She runs out into the hall to meet me. 'Well?' she asks eagerly.

'We have found a poor old woman,' I say; 'but I do not know whether she is alive or dead.'

My wife throws her arms round me and gives me a great hug.

'You will find dry things and a jug of hot toddy in your dressing-room, dear,' she says; and this is all the revenge she takes on me for my scepticism. The poor old woman is carried up-stairs and placed in a warm bath under my wife's direction; and before the doctor arrives she has shewn some faint symptoms of life; so my wife sends me word. Dr Bruce shakes his head when he sees her. 'Poor old soul,' he says; 'how came she out on the moor on such a fearful night? I doubt she has received a shock, which at her age she will not easily get over.'

They manage, however, to force a few spoonfuls of hot brandy-and-water down her throat; and presently a faint colour flickers on her cheek, and the poor old eyelids begin to tremble. My wife raises her head and makes her swallow some cordial which Dr Bruce has brought with him, and then lays her back among the soft warm pillows. 'I think she will rally now,' says Dr Bruce, as her breathing becomes more audible and regular. 'Nourishment and warmth will do the rest; but she has received a shock from which, I fear, she will never recover;' and so saying, he takes his leave.

By-and-by I go up to the room and find my wife watching alone by the aged sufferer. She looks up at me with tears in her eyes. 'Poor old soul,' she says; 'I am afraid she will not rally from the cold and exposure.'

I go round to the other side of the bed and look down upon her. The aged face looks wan and pinched, and the scanty gray locks which lie on the pillow are still wet from the snow. She is a very little woman, as far as I can judge of her in her recumbent position, and I should think must have reached her allotted threescore years and ten. 'Who can she be?' I repeat wonderingly. 'She does not belong to any of the villages hereabouts, or we should know her face; and I cannot imagine what could bring a stranger to the moor on such a night.'

As I speak a change passes over her face; the eyes unclose, and she looks inquiringly about her. She tries to speak, but is evidently too weak. My wife raises her, and gives her a spoonful of nourishment, while she says soothingly: 'Don't try to speak. You are among friends; and when you are better you shall tell us all about yourself. Lie still now and try to sleep.'

The gray head drops back wearily on the pillow; and soon we have the satisfaction of hearing by the regular respiration that our patient is asleep.

'You must come to bed now, Jessie,' I say. 'I shall ring for Mary, and she can sit up for the remainder of the night.' But my wife, who is a tender-hearted soul and a born nurse, will not desert her post; so I leave her watching, and retire to my solitary chamber.

When we meet in the morning I find that the little old woman has spoken a few words, and seems stronger. 'Come in with me now,' says my wife, 'and let us try to find out who she is.' We find her propped into a reclining posture with pillows, and Mary beside her feeding her.

'How are you now?' asks Jessie, bending over her.