The beating heart

The train puffed its way along its line through one of the prettiest parts of Kent and carried among its many passengers a bridal couple that had that morning been married and were now en route for their honeymoon.

Three weeks ago they had never seen each other, these two, who now at the respective ages of eighteen and twenty-five, had taken their solemn oath to remain together till Death. They had met at a dance. He had been in the mood to marry somebody; she was already rather tired of refusing offers and accepted his for a change. Their engagement had been a joyous whirl, and both were very happy now and were quite convinced that their choice was excellent. Eva thought Eric was so clever and had such a wonderful mind and character because he always agreed with her in conversation. Eric was so occupied with gazing into her blue eyes when he answered her searching questions, that he had not the remotest idea what it was he agreed to. If she said she loved dogs he said he thought there was nothing so jolly and faithful; if she said women should have votes, he said it would be a shame if they hadn’t. If she said she adored music, he said his happiest hours were passed listening to her playing; if she said vivisection was a blot on our civilization, he said it was a beastly, unnatural practice and ought to be stopped. If she said the traffic in old horses should be abolished he told her his idea had always been to found a home where old horses could end their days in peace. Once, when he trod on the tail of her mother’s cat, he had seemed, to her surprise, a little callous about it. She had reproached him. The cat had been picked up immediately by him, fondled on his knee and given a saucer of milk by way of consolation.

Eva simply glowed with joy and love after such conversations and incidents, and when her mother pointed out that she knew very little of the man and that the engagement was very short, she answered:

“It doesn’t matter, we are so alike and take the same view of everything. We are sure to be happy.”

She honestly thought she saw him in his words. All she saw was what he let her see—the reflection of her own warm-hearted, clear-headed self. She had really thought out the subjects on which she formed her well-founded opinions. When she offered these to him, as he never thought out anything and had no opinions, he accepted hers just as lightly and easily as he would have accepted the contrary ones, if offered!

It is always very difficult for the deep, strong nature of a woman to realise the facile worthlessness of a man’s. She was happy as she sat in the corner of the carriage, her hand tucked into his. She was sure—or nearly sure—that she had found a good, great man. He was quite sure he had found a girl with a pretty face and nice figure—these were clear to the eye, no bother of thinking them out—so both young people were blissfully content and satisfied.

Suddenly the easy motion of the train stopped. A jar and a jerk, then it drew up motionless where the line ran through a pretty wood. Eric sprang up and put his head out of the window. It was autumn, the evening chill, and dusk. He could not see ahead—only that they were not stopping at any station. Presently the guard came along by the side of the train:

“There’s an obstruction on the line, sir, on ahead! Part of a tunnel fallen in. It will take some clearing away, too. We can’t get on to-night.”

Most of the other passengers were looking out and listening to his discouraging accents. Their eyes wandered over the wood in which the train was pulled up. It stood golden in autumn leaf, silent and chill. It seemed unresponsive, and to offer no solution of their difficulties. Then plans began to be made and eagerly discussed. Some of the passengers were in favor of returning to the last station and stopping there the night, being somewhat reluctantly assured by the guard they could “get on in the morning.”

Eric withdrew his head and sat down by Eva.

“What would you like to do, darling?”

Eva was gazing into the mystery of the shadowy wood.

“Could we camp there?” she said. “Under that golden canopy, it’s very lovely!”

Eric’s face lengthened.

“Hardly, dear, I think. It’s so damp and——”

“There is a lovely full moon rising behind the trees,” she answered.

Eric was silent. The wood did not appeal to him, nor the rising moon. Neither did the “Bull and Cow” which was the station inn and the only one they had seen from the last station as they passed.

In the pause that ensued the guard entered the carriage and approached the young couple confidentially.

“We’ve decided to make a run back, sir, from here; but if I may make a suggestion, there’s a nice farmhouse not a stone’s throw from here where you’d be most comfortable. I know the party as keeps it would put you up for the night and give you a good supper.”

Eva looked up brightly.

“A farmhouse? Is it a pretty one?”

“Well, I couldn’t say as it’s so very pretty,” returned the guard doubtfully, “but there’s good ale to be had and fowls and pork and nice rooms, too, what they let in the summer.”

Eric became decisive.

“I think, darling, that’s really the best we can do, and if it’s quite near we can get our light luggage carried over.”

A man was found by the guard. They gathered their wraps and light cases together. In a few moments they were standing on the damp soil by the side of the train, listening to the directions he was giving for the route.

It did not sound so very near:

“You keeps away from the wood and you goes up the hill to the top and then down on the other side till you comes to the bridge, and don’t cross the bridge, but keep along by the stream till you get to a stile, and you cross the stile and go through two fields and then there’s a bit of a wood and you go through the wood and then you comes out on a bit of a slope and the farm’s just facing you.”

“But that’s a long way,” expostulated Eric. Eva was surprised at his cross tone. She had never heard it before.

“It will be a lovely walk on this moonlight night,” she volunteered.

“It’s not more’n fifteen minutes or ’arf-an-hour’s walk,” said the guard in an aggrieved tone, “and you can’t miss it, and the ale’s good.”

Eric tipped him. The man shouldered the cases and they started. They followed their instructions to keep away from the wood and took a little narrow path that wound up to the top of the hill. The moon was just peeping over its brow and made long shadows fall from the trees that stood here and there. The air was damp and cool and full of the scent of late roses and wet leaves.

To the girl it was all pure enjoyment, only clouded a little by the fact that Eric seemed so put out. They walked side by side in silence. The man trudged along behind them, silent also. Up and up till the ridge was reached, then down and down on the other side. Eva walked with springing steps admiring the calm beauty of it all, drawing pleasure from each little detail of star in the sky or gleam of moonlight on the brook. She hazarded a few enthusiastic remarks, but Eric did not seem to hear them, and there was silence until the second field beyond the stile was reached. Then through the quiet air came suddenly to them a strange sound—a low, hollow sound of misery. Eva stopped:

“What is that sound, Eric?”

“Dog barking, I should think,” he answered shortly.

“I never heard a dog bark like that before; it has an awful, extraordinary sound.”

“Yes, because the beast has barked himself hoarse, I should think, that’s all.”

Eva stood listening.

“Yes, I suppose it is hoarse as you say, but what a terrible sound.”

It was a terrible lamenting cry of a soul in misery that came to them wailing over the wood and the stream.

“Please come along,” Eric said as she stood there with dilating eyes. “We don’t want to spend the night here.”

Eva walked on. The sound of the barking, if barking it could be called, becoming clearer and nearer as they advanced. They were in the wood now, and the moonlight falling through the trees made beautiful patterns and traceries on the moss-grown path, but Eva now had no eyes for it. She was listening to that long-drawn wail of pain that came fitfully through the silver air.

“But aren’t you sorry for it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s barked itself into that condition, I expect. I suppose it’s one of the farm dogs. I hope the brute won’t go on like that all night.”

Eva was silent. It was not quite what she expected Eric to say, but she made no comment.

They were through the wood, on the slope, and there was the farmhouse at last facing them on the slope opposite.

It looked comfortable enough and cheery; well-built and solid with a warm blaze of light in its lower windows. A large farmyard was close at its side; an orchard on the other side. From behind the house the hollow, melancholy barking continued, belying the aspect of peace and rest.

At the door of the farmhouse they received a warm welcome. It was thrown open by the stout, good-tempered looking woman herself, while her husband and son, burly figures in their rough farm clothes, lounged up to the threshold, hands in pockets, to stare at the strangers. Behind them at the end of the passage or hall a door stood open to warmth and lights and a table laid for supper.

Farmer Bates and his wife let rooms in the summer, so they knew the ways of the rich and those who were not farmers. There was no difficulty. They could have a nice room, they could have hot water, they could have baths and they could have early tea in the morning; they could have roast chicken and soup and apple tart for supper.

Eric cheered up and Eva saw the expression she was familiar with come back to his face. The “engagement expression” as she now christened it in her mind. It was the only one she had seen for those three weeks—the only one she knew—but she saw now his face had others.

She was asked to go in and sit by the fire, and did so while the farmer’s young, handsome son took the place opposite. Eric was arranging terms with the woman and seeing their luggage carried upstairs.

The young farmer started a conversation as he was accustomed to do with the summer visitors. Eva was preoccupied; she wanted to ask about the dog, but she hesitated as to how best to approach the subject, and before she had decided, the others came back into the room.

The supper was quite a merry meal for all except herself. It was all quiet outside now, but in spite of the talk going on round her, her ears were only listening for that call from without. Eric grew quite jovial; he approved the farmer’s ale and drank heartily. The farming family were pleased at their guests’ appreciation, and the prospect of the good pay coming in. Bridegrooms were always generous. Suddenly, across the laughter and the talk, it came again; that awful wail of hopeless misery. The hosts did not appear to hear it, but Eva’s face blanched, and a look of annoyance flashed across Eric’s handsome countenance.

Eva turned to the young man next her:

“Why has that dog got such a peculiar bark?” she asked.

“Because he’s going mad, I think,” he answered. “We’re going to shoot him in the morning.”

The young farmer was quite surprised by the look of distress that come to the girl’s face.

“Oh, but why?” she exclaimed. “I think from his bark he wants water. Let me take him some.”

The man laughed:

“You take him water? Why you couldn’t get near him. He’s so savage he’d eat you alive.”

“What has made him so savage?”

“Well, we’ve kept him on the chain for seven years, and it’s sent him crazy, I think,” he answered indifferently. “We haven’t been able to get near him for years; we just throw him his food and push the water to him with a pole.”

“Do you mean you’ve kept him chained up and never let him free once, never given him any exercise for seven years?”

“Oh, he gets exercise enough dancing about at the end of that chain and howling. We let him howl in the winter for we don’t notice him, and it’s too much trouble to go out and bash him, but in the summer when the visitors are here we thrash him when he barks, for they don’t like it, and if it annoys you I’ll soon settle him now.”

And before she realised what he was going to do, he rose from his place, strode up to where some huge horsewhips were ranged against the wall, and then with one in his hand, went to the door. The burly farmer turned in his chair.

“That’s right, Steve, you go and give him a good hiding. Teach him to behave when we have ladies here.”

The son would have gone out, but Eva had sprung up and she put herself between him and the door.

“Pray don’t,” she said. “It does distress me to hear him, but I wouldn’t have him beaten for anything.”

The young farmer looked down into her blanched face and dilated eyes. Their beauty conquered him.

“As you like,” he said rather sullenly, and hung the whip up again on the wall.

The farmer himself laughed.

“Now then, missis,” he called banteringly. “You’ve no call to interfere. If he wants to beat our dog, why shouldn’t we?”

“Don’t be foolish, Eva. Come and sit down,” Eric said. His tone was full of annoyance.

She came back to the table and sat down facing the farmer. She was white and trembling.

“It’s not your dog,” she said steadily.

The farmer’s red face turned purple.

“Not our dog, eh! Not our dog! And ’oos dog is it, then, I should like to know?”

“It’s God’s dog,” the girl replied unflinchingly.

She had a beautiful voice, very soft and sweet in tone, but full of power. It vibrated through the room now, charged with the intensity of her feelings and held her listeners:

“All animals are His. He created them. They are not ours. They are only lent to us in trust, and it is my business to interfere, as it is everybody’s business to interfere when they are ill-treated and mis-used.”

No one spoke for a moment. The farmer sat back, open-mouthed.

“’Pon my word,” he stuttered after a minute. “’Pon my word,” and could get no further.

They all turned instinctively to Eric to see what view he would take, and Eva, too, looked at him appealingly. Surely he would take her side against the others!

“Eric?” she said questioningly. He coloured hotly. He was annoyed at her making a scene like this about nothing.

“Don’t be stupid, Eva,” he said shortly. “Go on with your supper. Of course Bates has a right to do as he thinks best. Personally, I think it would be a good thing if he did give the brute a thrashing and stopped his howling.”

“Eric!” she exclaimed again, but this time her tone was one of sheer amazement and bewilderment, and sitting in her place she stared across at him as if he were some new strange monster suddenly presented to her eyes. And indeed, this was the fact. She saw, for the first time, the real Eric. This was not the man she had married this morning, surely? This was not the man whose eyes had been wont to fill with sympathetic tears whenever she had wept. A feeling of extreme loneliness came over her. He was one in spirit with these coarse-faced, brutal farmers, who had tortured their four-footed servant for seven years and thrashed him when he had cried to them for help.

She was alone amongst them all.

She had no husband. That man opposite her, who had just let fall those words, was not the one she had loved and adored and married. By his speech he seemed to have let loose an icy river which was flowing now wide and deep as the Polar sea between them.

“Don’t sit staring at me,” Eric said impatiently. “Go on with your supper, for Heaven’s sake.”

Eva’s lips set. She pushed her plate from her and rose.

“Thank you, I have finished,” she merely said, but there was such a cutting disdain in her voice, such a thin, frosty edge to her tone, that it seemed to those at the table a shower of ice had fallen suddenly upon them. She stood for a moment looking down on the circle, at the flushed, bloated faces, at the burly lounging forms of these men who could sit there stuffing themselves to their protruding eyes; well-warmed, well-fed, well-clothed, and knowing that their faithful friend and devoted defender was stretched on the cold stones a few feet away, dying in the agonies of thirst and despair.

She turned and left the room before anyone moved or spoke, and went upstairs to the bedroom.

She opened the door. A fire had been lighted in the grate, and its cheerful red light was playing all over the room. The blinds were pulled down, and thick red curtains drawn across the windows. On the neat dressing-table stood a vase full of dried lavender. The bed in the corner with snowy sheets and counterpane invited to repose. Another little bed, draped in pink dimity, stood near the window.

It was a room in which any weary traveller would have liked to rest.

Eva noticed nothing. She shut the door behind her, then walked over to the window, pulled aside the curtains and let the spring blind fly up with a snap. Then she looked out, and there was the dog! Facing her across a large stone paved yard, fully illuminated by the brilliant moonlight so that she could see every detail. At the extreme end of his chain, his long-nailed paws on the stone flags, the wild-eyed, dishevelled looking creature stood, gazing towards the house where his tormentors lived. The girl’s quick eyes took in his gaunt and bony frame, the rough hair that stood upright down his spine, the open jaw with white foam hanging from it, the neck from which all the hair was gone, rubbed away in his ceaseless efforts to free himself from his chain. Near him were a few bones and untouched scraps. Just out of his reach, however he might strain, was an overturned earthenware saucer. It looked dry, as if it had not contained water for many days.

So little like a dog the creature looked, she could not determine to what breed it belonged, but it seemed to have been something between a mastiff and a wolfhound. Now it was just a huge, wasted wreck, glaring-eyed, demented, that man had made.

And she looked out at it and pitied it and loved it with that boundless love and sympathy for all suffering things, that is the best part of the female nature.

So he had stood in that stone-paved yard, week in week out for seven years—day after day, night after night, of burning sun and intolerable heat, or icy cold and cutting winds. No shelter, not even a kennel, not even a trace of straw. All round him was a ring of shining white on the grey flags which his scratching feet had made in his hopeless efforts to be free; and the physical sufferings were the least of what he had borne. The worst had been the awful monotony of those long, dreary days without hope, without aim or occupation: that emptiness and that sameness that preys on an animal’s brain just as much as on a man’s.

Chained up in his youthful days, with all the wild longings for the twenty-mile run, the smell of the wildwoods, the finding of mates, fermenting in his blood, with his great canine heart full of that wonderful enthusiastic worship of man that Nature has planted there, longing for love and companionship, for the touch of a kind hand on his head, he had watched the homestead with wistful, hungering eyes. And because, when people approached him, he had tugged so frantically at his chain and pawed the air to show his joy and longing to follow them, he had been thought savage, and when he had cried out in his loneliness, he had been beaten into quietude; but his agony and his sorrow, and his wonder at it all was so great that even those cruel thrashings had not silenced him.

And now, after seven years of this, he was to be shot to-morrow! The girl, looking out at him, understood all he had gone through, and a fierce resentment against his tormentors rose and swelled within her like a great wave. Somehow, she would save him, she determined, and give him a little happiness before he died; give him that love and sympathy his heart had been craving for all those years. She had forgotten herself, forgotten it was her wedding evening—a time so passionately anticipated during her engagement. As for Eric, he seemed to have disappeared from her. Somewhere between the Church and the farmhouse the Eric she loved had vanished. How could she reach that poor, condemned prisoner? If she went down now to the farmhouse door she would be heard unfastening it, even if she could move those solid bars. If she were seen in the yard she would certainly be followed and prevented from getting near the dog. No one else could be persuaded to release him. Everyone was afraid of those gleaming teeth and blood-shot eyes. She would only probably succeed in getting him shot that night instead of to-morrow. And how would they shoot him? Not with one merciful bullet sent direct to the brain; but probably aiming from a distance, they might shoot and wound him a dozen times and then perhaps leave him dying and not dead.

They would certainly kill him in the same clumsy, misunderstanding way they had treated him while alive. Merely to release him in his present condition, wild-looking and supposed to be mad, would be no kindness. If he dashed away he would soon be followed, perhaps stoned by the screaming rabble of the village. No, she must not only release him, she must take him away and with her. He was her dog now. No one wanted him. He was going to be shot. Well, she would not have that. She would take him. Then suddenly she remembered Eric. He would certainly object! and she was married. She had to consult him.

She turned from the window in a sudden panic—she was a prisoner, too. And her gaoler was of the stamp of the men downstairs. How awful this was! She had never meant to marry such a man. Had he shown himself before the ceremony as he had at the supper here, she would never have married him. Her hands turned cold, and her knees shook. She sank down in a chair by the fire. She had never realized the prison side of marriage.

Union with the twin soul she had thought she had found in Eric had not suggested it. But now she saw how the case was. Had she been travelling alone she could have gone to the farmer and paid him his own price for the dog and taken him away with her, openly. It would have been quite simple. But now she knew instinctively Eric would not let her do this and as he was against her as well as all those downstairs, the dog would probably be shot before her eyes and she would be powerless to prevent it because she had given up her single freedom of action, given up the right over her own conduct. And to that man! It was horrible. Her nails sank into her clenched hands. In that moment she longed to be free of that room, free of her marriage as the dog outside longed to be free of his chain. The sex passion is infinitely curious in its nature. Though in some ways so strong, so resistless, yet in others it is so frail a plant that the lightest wind may sweep it away. Eva had given to Eric not only love and admiration, but also the natural joyous passion of awakened girlhood. Now all these were equally dead. She sat there, numb and cold with only one desire—to save the dog and escape.

As she sat trying to think out some plan of action, the door opened and Eric came in. The supper had done him good; his bad temper was forgotten. He came in smiling, and she saw again the old Eric with the “engagement expression.” Suddenly it occurred to her she could win her way by blandishment however her feelings might have changed. For the dog’s sake she must dissemble and act.

She went up to him with arms outstretched.

“Oh, Eric darling, I am so glad you have come. Do do me a favor, and I’ll simply adore you. Do let us buy that poor dog and take him away with us and make up to him for all he has suffered.”

The smile died away from the man’s face. He unclasped her arms from his neck.

“But, my dear child, he’s mad. You can’t take a mad dog about with you. His own people are afraid to go near him.”

“I should think they would be after the way they have treated him,” she answered with burning indignation. “But I’m not afraid of him. He is not mad. He is only crazy with loneliness and thirst. Let me go down and release him, and I’ll be responsible for him.”

Eric stared at her in amazement and with a growing anger fed by jealousy and wounded vanity.

A man’s nerves and state of general self-control are not at their best on such an occasion as this, and in his unbalanced condition it seemed intolerable to him that his bride should not be wholly occupied with himself but should be worrying over a miserable brute of a dog. It did not occur to him that she was only now displaying those qualities that had so much attracted him from the first—that soft, warm heart, that all-embracing love and sympathy that coupled with her physical beauty had made him decide to marry her out of all the women he might have chosen. It did not occur to him either what a priceless possession of adoring love he might have gained for all the rest of his life by yielding to her then and conquering himself; nor how, for ever he would kill his own future by opposition. He was simply intensely angry, jealous and annoyed and blinded by hurt vanity and selfish passion.

“It’s our duty to do something,” she urged. “Come and look at him,” and she drew him, reluctant, to the window.

The dog stood in the same position at the end of the hateful chain! his eyes glaring, his mouth open, his body shivering. The man and woman looked out at him together. The woman’s eyes saw a fellow creature’s suffering soul, the man saw—a mad dog.

“It’s really nothing whatever to do with us,” he expostulated, “it’s not our business. The people who own him must know how to manage him. Why do you bother yourself about it!”

Eva turned and gazed at him with sheer surprise.

“But Eric, we couldn’t possibly enjoy ourselves and sleep comfortably up here knowing he is there in such misery!”

“Of course, we could, if you were not so silly about it,” he answered.

Eva was silent. Power to reply seemed taken away from her in face of this colossal adamantine hardness. She began to realise that this man she had married was not at all the exceptional individual she had imagined, but just the ordinary usual human being, not actively cruel, but absolutely indifferent and callous, not caring about anything except the satisfaction of his senses and the comfort of his own body.

“Well, if you could, I couldn’t,” she said after a moment. “Let me go down and unchain him and tell the people I’ll buy him. If you don’t want him with us, I’ll send him to my sister to keep for me.”

“To attempt to unchain a dog in that condition is going to your death,” he said shortly, keeping control over himself as well as he could.

“I am sure it’s not so, but even if it were and I feel it’s my duty, I ought to do it. Why, Eric, how many times in the War did you not go forward to almost certain death just because it was your duty?”

Eric coloured furiously.

“That may be, but I’m not going to risk my life now to free a mad dog.”

“I’m not asking you to. I want to free him.”

“And my answer is, you shan’t do anything so damnably foolish.” Swept by a sudden whirl of anger that was utterly beyond him to control, he strode across the room, locked the door, tore out the key and flung it with all his force through the window. It fell tinkling on the stone flags of the yard.

“Now that ends all this damned nonsense,” he said violently, and drew her roughly away from the window which he closed, and pulled the curtain across.

The girl stood as if turned into stone. As the key fell, a cry escaped her. A cry so bitter with hate and loathing that he might well have shuddered if he had noted it. But he did not. He did not realise it was the death-cry of the last shred of love or feeling of allegiance to him that was left in her heart.

The explosion of rage had helped Eric to become normal again. Having now secured, as he supposed, beyond all possibility of doubt, his own way, he became calmer. The brain-storm passed. He came up to where she stood, mute and motionless by the hearth.

“Darling,” he said, attempting to draw her into his arms, “don’t be stupid and spoil all our pleasure. Have you forgotten how we looked forward to being like this alone together?”

She wrenched herself away from him, and there was such a fury of resentment in her eyes that even he fell back from her with a confused sense of having made some fatal error. Women were intended by Nature to rule the world, not men, and that is why any attempt to coerce a woman by man generally fails.

“Don’t touch me,” she said in a voice low and sharp with the intensity of her anger. “You shall never touch me again.”

“You seem to forget you’re my wife,” he said hotly.

“If I am fifty thousand times your wife I will never give myself to you. You can kill me first.”

Eric stepped back and regarded her with dismay. He was face to face now with a force which he could only dimly comprehend. But as the storm had passed from his brain, it had left his intellect fairly clear, and he began to see things were getting serious. Somehow he was making a mess of it. Mechanically he turned away, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarette case. He drew out a cigarette, lighted it and began to smoke. What would be best to do, he wondered. Perhaps, if he said nothing she would calm down again. He rather wished he had not been so hasty. He wished he had put the key in his pocket instead of throwing it out of the window. There was no getting out of the room now for either of them. He regretted he had not been wiser and temporised more.

Presently he threw himself into a chair, and watched her furtively. Her eyes were turned away towards the fire. She stood like a thing turned into stone.

“What are we going to do, then?” he said, half banteringly, when the silence became unbearable. “Sit up all night?”

“As you please,” the girl replied, without turning her head. He wondered what she was thinking about, and debated feverishly with himself what he should do or say. He would have been astonished if he could have known her thoughts. He had not the faintest conception of the character and the will he was dealing with.

The girl stood there,—Herself, sunk utterly in her thought. How to gain her end and carry out the dog’s deliverance was the only thing that occupied her. Eric’s last words had suddenly flashed a light into her brain. For a moment, when the key had whizzed by her and clinked on the stones without, hope had died in her. It seemed so impossible then to ever reach the poor chained one down there in time, but now his words, “sit up all night” showed her suddenly the contrary proposition. If Eric were once asleep and she, alone awake in the room, she could effect her escape from it by the window. Her heart gave a suffocating leap upward as the whole plan unrolled itself like a map before her mental vision. Light and agile as a cat, it would be possible for her to swing herself down by knotted sheets to the yard, loose the prisoner, and with him run through the moon-lighted country, back to that station down the line their train had passed, and catch the first one back to London. It was all most dangerous and difficult, most open to failure, still it was a possible plan—if Eric were asleep.

And with an infinite sense of horror and loathing, she realised the best and perhaps the only way to ensure his sleep was to reverse all she had said, to humiliate herself, to act a part, to give herself to him—and let him sleep. She saw his plan now was to sit up and smoke waiting and hoping she would change her mind. Time was passing, and each silver minute of the night brought the prisoner outside nearer to his doom.

She suddenly bent her head down on the mantelpiece. Nothing she would hate so much now as the caress of this man in whose caresses she had once so rejoiced! These moments she had so looked forward to, how horrible, how terrible they were now! His embrace! Surely with that fury of resentment in her heart, she would suffocate in it! But the dog had to be saved, and to accomplish that she would go through any suffering, any degradation. She drew herself together with a supreme effort of will, and turned to the man in the chair.

“Eric, I am so sorry I spoke as I did. Let’s never mind about anything. Let’s forget it. Kiss me.”

He had sprung to his feet at her first word. She was beside him now, looking up at him with her glorious eyes full of light and her face glowing with smiles, though her heart was shuddering within her.

“Darling, my own, I am so sorry too,” Eric was covering her upturned face with kisses. “My dearest, my very own.”

Outside, the dog stood cold and stiff in the damp night air, aching with thirst, his poor, half-crazy eyes turned up to the moonlit sky from which no mercy came. The hours crept by, till the clock in the village struck three. For seven years he had listened to those strokes that marked the passing hours, hours that never brought him nearer to liberty, to the free use of his cramped limbs, to any of the natural joys for which he had been created. He sank wearily down on his haunches. He could no longer cry out; his voice seemed broken in his throat, his tongue was swollen and black. He kept his head turned to the window where he had seen the two figures stand looking at him. Some faint, dull hope had stirred in him that they might be thinking of him, that they might be coming to him to alleviate his misery and his torment of thirst. But no, the window had been shut and had gone dark.

Inside the room the strokes of the clock vibrated through the stillness, and Eva, lying open-eyed and filled with desperate impatience, slid noiselessly out of bed, and with soundless movements and feverish haste began to dress. Eric was asleep. Never in all her life had she prayed for anything so fervently as she did now that he might remain so. With infinite caution she crept about the room, making her toilet to the minutest detail. Within her all her personal self felt humiliated, outraged, seething with fury, but she would not think of herself, only of the work ahead to be done.

Hurry generally means noise. Therefore, filled with burning impatience as she was, she had to move slowly, regulating each movement and each tip-toe step. Once Eric moved and sighed, and she started in terror and stood motionless, but he did not awake, and with a thumping heart and trembling fingers she went on with her preparations. When she was fully dressed to her hat, and with her gloves and purse stowed away in her bodice, together with Eric’s clasp-knife that he had left lying on the table, she approached the unoccupied bed standing in the corner by the window, and inch by inch drew the sheets from it. These alone would have been too short a length for her purpose even when knotted together at their extreme ends, but she took the counterpane as well, and all three end to end she judged would let her nearly to the ground. At their country place at home her father had shown her how to escape in case of fire, and she knew now exactly what to do. She knotted the corner of the sheet tightly round the little wooden post of the bed, and then there was the barrier of the window to be surmounted. She did not dare to draw back the curtains for fear of the rattle of their rings, but she lifted them slowly and silently to one side and then with both hands and infinite care, guided the spring blind up and looked out. Her heart gave a leap of boundless sympathy as she saw the great dog sitting at the end of his tightly-drawn chain, still gazing towards the window—his only hope—as he had been hours ago.

No Juliet felt more eager to join her Romeo than this girl did now to get to the suffering animal and soothe its pain. And of such natures is the Kingdom of Heaven. Such people are those who make this earth a little less like hell. Blind and curtain out of the way, it still remained to open the window without noise. Very, very softly with indrawn breath and shaking heart, she raised it half way, just enough to let her through. Then she paid out her long rope of knotted bedclothes, and looking out, she saw it reached to within about eight feet of the yard. Then, as often before in the fire drill, she crept on to the window sill, twisted her feet well round the dangling cloths and gripped them hard in her little hands. Then down, down she swung her light weight and dropped at length noiselessly to the ground. The captive in the yard rose to his feet and lowered his head, staring at her fixedly, but he gave no sound. Some instinct seemed to tell him that all this strange proceeding had something to do with him.

The girl, once out of the room and away from the sleeping man she had sworn to love and honour and cleave to till death, felt such a rush of joyous elation that it seemed to give her wings. Quite half her work was successfully accomplished. She ran swift and silent as a shadow across the yard.

As he realised she was actually coming to him, the enormous dog tore at his chain, and as he could not advance he reared himself on his hind legs, his front pawing at the air, his eyes almost out of his head, his foaming jaws wide open. It was a fearsome sight, but the girl went on unflinchingly, straight up to the desperate animal. Tall as she was the dog stood as high as herself, and as she reached him his great bony, shaggy paws descended heavily on her shoulders, and she put both her arms out under them and clasped him to her warm, loving breast. And the animal enveloped in that marvelous electricity that flowed out from her, soothed and calmed instantly by that contact with true loving humanity which he had longed for all through his dreary life stood perfectly still, all his raging pulses calmed, all his tormenting pains dying away.

“Darling, be good now while I release you,” she said in his ear, and gently let him slide to his four feet. Then she knelt down beside him and put her hands to his collar.

The dog understood perfectly she had come to release him. At last, at last he would be free, and he stood patient and still as a statue, only his whole frame quivered and thrilled with joy. He felt her little fingers trying desperately to undo the hateful collar. Eva’s heart beat almost to choke her. Suppose, suppose she failed to get it undone. Seven years had solidified the leather almost into iron; the brass point that pierced the leather was embedded in and had become one almost with it.

Both were welded together under a thick coat of verdigris. Every nail on her fingers was broken before she gave up the hopeless task of unstrapping it. Then, keeping one hand on the dog’s head, she felt in her bosom for the knife.

Because she understood him so perfectly, and that his loneliness and forsaken neglect had been the chief sorrow of his life, she knew just how to manage him. When she failed to undo the collar, he felt his heart die within him and had she moved away from him, his poor desperate brain would have given way. But she kept quite close to him and that told him that all hope was not lost, and nerved him to patience. The collar was loose for the hair had been rubbed and the neck wasted away which had filled it, and there was room for the knife-blade to pass under the leather.

“Hold still, now, don’t move,” she whispered in tense tones, and then sawed with all her strength, outwards on the collar.

It seemed incredibly hard, but the knife was sharp and leather must in the end yield to steel.

After minutes that seemed hours she cut it through, and with one great bound the dog leapt away from chain and collar. Free! Free in the moonlit night! Eva rose to her feet, and he came back to her, lowering his great body down to the earth on his fore-paws, and then springing to his full height to put them on her breast to show his rapture. Elated, joyous, but still in terror of being overtaken, Eva threw one rapid glance over the silent house and up to the window where her long white rope hung gleaming in the moonlight.

Then “Come,” she said to the dog, and close, side by side, they raced out of the yard by the door just behind where he had been chained. A door that was never fastened for he had guarded it so faithfully and securely. Out of the yard and through the wasty farmyard adjoining, then over the low wall surrounding it, and they were out on the slope, tearing away like mad things to the shelter of the wood.

Here they continued to run, down the narrow, mossy path that Eric and she had come by, filled with such different feelings the evening before. Silent now, with all their strength given to speed, but with perfect union of intention, they steadied down to an even trot, the dog modifying his pace to the human being’s. He knew that she had saved him, freed him, and he was now her faithful slave for life. No evil, no danger should come near her. No enemy could lay a finger on her as long as an atom of strength remained in him to defend her. He was hers and she was his till death.

At last they reached the spot where the train had pulled up the previous evening, and Eva, still hounded by the fear of pursuit, after a few minutes’ rest, ran on steadily, taking a little path that passed beneath evergreens near the railway.

The station down the line was thirteen miles distant, yet such is the force of joy and the power of will and determination that the girl felt hardly fatigued when she saw the red and green lights ahead of her; and she walked into the booking office with a light and springing step as the yawning clerk opened it.

The next train to London, the first in the day to carry the mails, left in fifteen minutes. She took her ticket and a dog ticket, and went out on to the platform and sat down. She felt such happiness, such joy in her success, her accomplished plan, that nothing in her life had equalled it, and all sense of pain and tiredness were entirely drowned in it.

The dog was more distressed than she. He fell heavily at her feet as she sat down. He was footsore, his limbs ached and he was oh, so thirsty, but he minded nothing. He was content.

Eva had been afraid to wait to give him water, but she bent over him now, looking anxiously at his swollen, hanging tongue. He did not ask for anything, only looked up at her with great eyes from which the wildness was already dying away; for had he not felt a soft hand on his head and heard a kind voice in his ear?

She rose to seek water for him, and, stiff and sore though he was, he dragged himself to his feet to follow her. He could not bear her to move away from him.

There was a little tap of water standing out from the wall further down the platform, and stooping down, she turned it on and made a little bowl of her two small, pink-palmed hands for him to drink from. At first he seemed hardly able to swallow, nor get the water over his swollen tongue, but she waited patiently, and at last he drank easily and freely as long as she thought good for him. Then they walked back to the seat and she sat down and took his head on her knees and smoothed back the harsh, rough hair and looked deep into his eyes, and they talked together, as lovers do, in looks and silence.

At last the train arrived, and the guard of it came along, swinging his lantern. He stopped when he caught sight of her daintily-dressed figure, and the huge, rough wolfhound at her side. She turned to him, her hand on the carriage door.

“Can I take him in the carriage with me?” she asked.

The guard flashed his light over them.

“Yes, that’ll be all right. The train’s almost empty,” he replied, eyeing the dog. He was not at all anxious to have the grim-looking beast shut up with him in his van.

“Not many people travels at this time of night,” he added inquisitively, looking in at her after she was seated and the dog had dropped onto the floor of the carriage.

Eva made no response, and he turned away mumbling in a dissatisfied tone: “Runaways and eloping couples, thieves and such—them’s wot travels at night.”

Two or three minutes more of this anguished suspense and then the train started, gathered speed and they were away—safe. She leant over the dog with a joyous laugh. Oh, the relief of that moving train! Not Eric nor Bates, nor all the farm hands could overtake them now.

“He talked of eloping couples; that’s just what we are, aren’t we, darling?” And the dog beat his great, waving brush of a tail on the carriage floor for answer. She sat back in a corner, for the first time realising that she was very tired, but the joy at her heart glowed more fiercely every moment as the train rushed on its non-stop run to town. She had done it all; she had succeeded so admirably. She had saved the dog. She did not believe they could be separated now. If Bates sued her for stealing his dog she was ready to pay his full value which the farmer would probably prefer; and Eric? What would he do or say or think when he woke and found himself alone in the room where he had locked himself? Would he climb down the sheets as she had done? She wondered and laughed. But whatever he did he should never approach her again.

Arrived in town she went straight to her sister, a girl of twenty, widowed in the War, who had always strenuously disapproved of Eric. Brushing past the astonished footman in the hall, she ran upstairs and found the beautiful Linda still in bed. She sat up in astonishment as Eva and the great hound burst into the room.

“Linda, I’ve eloped!”

“Well, you are modern! You were only married yesterday!”

“I know,” Eva answered, sitting down in a deep armchair, “but I found I hadn’t married the man I meant to after all, but somebody else that I didn’t like at all.”

“We most of us do that,” returned Linda, swinging two ivory feet out of bed and eyeing the dog:

“What a beautiful dog. What’s he doing here?”

Few would have applied that adjective to the great creature stretched before her. But Linda saw through the devastation man had made to the original beauty given by Nature.

“He is the cause of everything. I eloped with him.”

“What do you mean? Tell me everything, now, from the beginning,” and Linda wrapped herself in a rose-hued gown and settled herself to listen. The dog stretched himself out on his side between them and fell asleep, worn out, not so much by the physical exertions as the conflicting emotions of the night.

Eva told all; shortly, incisively. Only once did she give rein to her feelings—when she had to tell how she had bought Eric’s passivity and sleep—she sprang up with her hands clenched into knots.

“If I have a child by him, I’ll kill it before it breathes!” she exclaimed. “What is the good of multiplying callous brutes like that?”

Linda listened attentively to the end. Then she rose and rang the bell.

“You poor thing, you must be quite worn out. What you want is breakfast first and then sleep.”

“But did I do rightly? Do tell me what you think, Lin.”

“Of course I think so, and I think you have made a good exchange. A dog will never disappoint you—never go back on you—never be unkind to you, never be unfaithful to you and a man will—always.”

Eva sighed, leaning back and closing her eyes.

“It’s so good to be back with you, Lin.”

The maid brought in hot coffee, and a huge breakfast tray of delicious edibles, and the girls laughed and talked as they ate, and the dog who had had bones flung to him on the flags, had a pile of delicate curly slices of bacon on a hand-painted porcelain dish. After breakfast Linda insisted on Eva going to bed, and there in that soundless room the girl and dog slept away the morning hours.

In the afternoon Eric came, and Eva went down to see him in the library.

“What does all this mean?” he asked as she closed the door and stood facing him.

“I am not coming back to you. Linda has asked me to stay with her, and I have accepted.”

“But you married me!”

“No, that’s where you make the mistake. I married a dream man, a man of my own imagination, a man who was decent and kind and humane, quite different from you altogether.”

Eric flushed a dull, angry red.

“You consummated the marriage with me anyhow; you won’t deny that, I suppose?” he said.

A look of intense repulsion came over her face.

“For the dog’s sake, I gave myself to you, though I loathed you,” she answered in a low tone, full of repressed vehemence.

“For the dog’s sake,” repeated Eric, growing more and more bewildered and less and less able to solve the problem that woman always presents to man. “How? I don’t understand.”

“You had determined to sit up all night and prevent me going to him; if I had had any chloroform or any drug to put you to sleep I would have given it to you. I had nothing but myself so I gave you that.”

She was standing close to him and looking straight into his eyes. The gaze was relentless and bright as the blade of a sword.

“But your kisses—your wonderful passion—your insistence—” he stammered.

“It was all for his sake. I tell you, I hated and loathed you.”

“It was damned good acting then.”

“It could hardly exceed yours during our engagement,” she flashed back.

“Acting, no, it was prostitution,” he said with a sudden storm of anger, “if what you say now is true.”

“Perhaps; you may call it what you please. I would do anything in the world to save a helpless and suffering animal and be proud of it,” she answered.

Eric turned away and took a few paces up the long room. She angered him. In a way he longed to strike her for what she said to him, but the memory of last night clung to him and held him. It had been so wonderful, so perfect, her love, real or assumed; she looked now so bright, so true, so undaunted, he longed for her, coveted her more than ever he had done in the past. He could not imagine how they had drifted into this mess. He had tried hard to please her during their engagement and had succeeded. He had won her. How had he lost her so soon? He did not know what to say, nor how to act. And all about this stupid dog; he would kill the beast if he could get hold of it.

“What can we do now?” he said, at last in a tone of bewildered perplexity.

“We must get a divorce. I believe it can be managed somehow. Your wife has eloped, deserted you, refuses to come back, go to a lawyer and see what he can do for you. If those charges are not enough, I have done more for I married a good man, and my wedding night was passed with somebody else, another totally different man. If a lawyer can’t twist that into cause for divorce, he can’t be much of a lawyer. I don’t want to spoil your whole life, so I give you leave to say anything you like about me.”

And before he had realised it, she had opened the door and had gone, and though he stormed and swore and summoned the servants and Linda came down to him, nothing would induce Eva to see him again.

She vanished from him and all he could do was to follow her advice and seek consolation of his lawyers.

About a year later, had anyone passed through the scarlet land of poppies at Cromer, he would have seen two girls sitting among them, looking out to the hazy sea, and a great wolfhound lying between them. He has been christened Joy, and his sparkling eye and glossy coat, his rounded form and waving brush of a tail all speak to the appropriateness of his name.

He and Eva are inseparable and he understands her looks, her tones, her words. He understands her far better than Eric ever had, and at any moment he would lay down his life joyfully for her sake.

“I see that Eric has married again, Eva,” Linda said presently. “So now you are really and truly free. Do you think you will ever marry again, yourself?”

“Not while Joy lives,” Eva answered, her little hand resting on his neck and buried in its thick, glossy black hair. “I would never give him a rival. The next man might want to chain him up in the yard! Then we’d have to run away again, wouldn’t we, Joy?”

And the great dog leapt to his feet and gave a deep, musical bark in answer, bounding backwards and forwards and leaping up to them as the two girls rose and wended their way slowly through the poppies, emblems of peace and forgetfulness, home.