Aileen Aroon, A Memoir

“I have often heard you speak of your dog Tyro, Gordon,” said Frank; “can’t you tell us his history?”

“I will, with pleasure,” I replied. “He was the dog of my student days. I never loved a dog more, I never loved one so much, with the exception perhaps of Theodore Nero – or you, Aileen, for I see you glancing up at me. No, you needn’t sigh so.”

But about Tyro. Here is his story: – He was bred from a pure Scottish collie, the father a powerful retriever (Irish). “Bah!” some one may here say, “only a mongrel,” a class of dogs whose praises few care to sing, and whose virtues are written in water. A watch-dog of the right sort was Tyro; and from the day when his brown eyes first rested on me, for twelve long years, by sea and land, I never had a more loving companion or trusty friend. He was a large and very strong dog, feathered like a Newfoundland, but with hair so soft and long and glossy, as to gain for him in his native village the epithet of “silken dog.” In colour he was black-and-tan, with snow-white gauntlets and shirt-front. His face was very remarkable, his eyes bright and tender, giving him, with his long, silky ears, almost the expression of a beautiful girl. Being good-mannered, kind, and always properly groomed, he was universally admired, and respected by high and low. He was, indeed, patted by peers and petted by peasants, never objected to in first-class railway cars or steamer saloons, and the most fastidious of hotel waiters did not hesitate to admit him, while he lounged daintily on sofa or ottoman, with the sang froid of one who had a right. Tyro came into my possession a round-pawed fun-and-mischief-loving puppy. His first playmate was a barn-door fowl, of the male persuasion, who had gained free access to the kitchen on the plea of being a young female in delicate health; which little piece of deceit, on being discovered by his one day having forgot himself so far as to crow, cost “Maggie,” the name he impudently went by, his head. Very dull indeed was poor Tyro on the following day, but when the same evening he found Maggie’s head and neck heartlessly exposed on the dunghill, his grief knew no bounds. Slowly he brought it to the kitchen, and with a heavy sigh deposited it on the hearthstone-corner, and all the night and part of next day it was “waked,” the pup refusing all food, and flashing his teeth meaningly at whosoever attempted to remove it, until sleep at last soothed his sorrow. I took to the dog after that, and never repented it, for he saved my life, of which anon. Shortly after his “childish sorrow,” Tyro had a difference of opinion with a cat, and got rather severely handled, and this I think it was that led him, when a grown dog, to a confusion of ideas regarding these animals, plus hares and rabbits; “when taken to be well shaken,” was his motto, adding “wherever seen,” so he slew them indiscriminately. This cat-killing propensity was exceedingly reprehensible, but the habit once formed never could be cured; although I, stimulated by the loss of guinea after guinea, whipped him for it, and many an old crone – deprived of her pet – has scolded him in English, Irish, and Scotch, all with the same effect.

Talking of cats, however, there was one to whom Tyro condescendingly forgave the sin of existing. It so fell out that, in a fight with a staghound, he was wounded in a large artery, and was fast bleeding to death, because no one dared to go near him, until a certain sturdy eccentric woman, very fond of our family, came upon the scene. She quickly enveloped her arms with towels, to save herself from bites, and thus armed, thumbed the artery for two hours; then dressing it with cobwebs, saved the dog’s life. Tyro became, when well, a constant visitor at the woman’s cottage; he actually came to love her, often brought her the hares he killed, and, best favour of all to the old maid, considerately permitted her cat to live during his royal pleasure; but, if he met the cat abroad, he changed his direction, and inside he never let his eyes rest upon her.

When Tyro came of age, twenty-one (months), he thought it was high time to select a profession, for hitherto he had led a rather roving life. One thing determined him. My father’s shepherd’s toothless old collie died, and having duly mourned for her loss, he – the shepherd – one day brought home another to fill up the death-vacancy. She was black, and very shaggy, had youth and beauty on her side, pearly teeth, hair that shone like burnished silver, and, in short, was quite a charming shepherdess – so, at least, thought Tyro; and what more natural than that he should fall in love with her? So he did. In her idle hours they gambolled together on the gowny braes, brushed the bells from the purple heather and the dewdrops from the grass, chased the hares, bullied the cat, barked and larked, and, in short, behaved entirely like a pair of engaged lovers of the canine class; and then said Tyro to himself, “My mother was a shepherdess, I will be a shepherd, and thus enjoy the company of my beloved ‘Phillis’ for ever, and perhaps a day or two longer.” And no young gentleman ever gave himself with more energy to a chosen profession than did Tyro. He was up with the lark – the bird that picks up the worm – and away to the hill and the moor. To his faults the shepherd was most indulgent for a few days; but when Tyro, in his over-zeal, attempted to play the wolf, he was, very properly, punished. “What an indignity! Before one’s Phillis too!” Tyro turned tail and trotted sulkily home. “Bother the sheep!” he must have thought; at any rate, he took a dire revenge – not on the shepherd, his acquaintance he merely cut, and he even continued to share the crib with his little ensnarer – but on the sheep-fold.

A neighbouring farmer’s dog, of no particular breed, was in the habit of meeting Tyro at summer gloaming, in a wood equidistant from their respective homes. They then shook tails, and trotted off side by side. Being a very early riser, I used often to see Tyro coming home in the mornings, jaded, worn, and muddy, avoiding the roads, and creeping along by ditches and hedgerows. When I went to meet him, he threw himself at my feet, as much as to say, “Thrash away, and be quick about it.” This went on for weeks, though I did not know then what mischief “the twa dogs” had been brewing, although ugly rumours began to be heard in all the countryside about murdered sheep and bleeding lambs; but my eyes were opened, and opened with a vengeance, when nineteen of the sheep on my father’s hill-side were made bleeding lumps of clay in one short “simmer nicht”; and had Tyro been tried for his life, he could scarcely have proved an alibi, and, moreover, his pretty breast was like unto a robin’s, and his gauntlets steeped in gore. Dire was the punishment that fell on Tyro’s back for thus forsaking the path of virtue for a sheep-walk; and for two or three years, until, like the “Rose o’ Anandale,” he —

“Left his Highland homeAnd wandered forth with me,”

he was condemned to the chain.

He now became really a watch-dog, and a right good one he proved.

The chain was of course slipped at night when his real duties were supposed to commence. Gipsies – tinklers we call them – were just then an epidemic in our part of the country; and our hen-roosts were in an especial manner laid under blackmail. One or two of those same long-legged gentry got a lesson from Tyro they did not speedily forget. I have seldom seen a dog that could knock down a man with less unnecessary violence. So surely as any one laid a hand on his master, even in mimic assault, he was laid prone on his back, and that, too, in a thoroughly business-like fashion; and violence was only offered if the lowly-laid made an attempt to get up till out of arrest.

I never had a dog of a more affectionate disposition than my dead-and-gone friend Tyro. By sea and land, of course I was his especial charge; but that did not prevent him from joyously recognising “friends he had not seen for years.” Like his human shipmates, he too used to look out for land, and he was generally the first to make known the welcome news, by jumping on the bulwarks, snuffing the air, and giving one long loud bark, which was slightly hysterical, as if there were a big lump in his throat somewhere.

I should go on the principle of de mortuis nil nisi bonum; but I am bound to speak of Tyro’s faults as well as his virtues. Reader, he had a temper – never once shown to woman or child, but often, when he fancied his casus belli just, to man, and once or twice to his master. Why, one night, in my absence, he turned my servant out, and took forcible possession of my bed. It was hard, although I had stayed out rather late; but only by killing him could I have dislodged him, so for several reasons I preferred a night on the sofa, and next morning I reasoned the matter with him.

During our country life, Tyro took good care I should move as little as possible without him, and consequently dubbed himself knight-companion of my rambles over green field and heathy mountain, and these were not few. We often extended our excursions until the stars shone over us, then we made our lodging on the cold ground, Tyro’s duties being those of watch and pillow. Often though, on awakening in the morning, I found my head among the heather, and my pillow sitting comfortably by my side panting, generally with a fine hare between its paws, for it had been “up in the morning airly” and “o’er the hills and far awa’,” long before I knew myself from a stone.

Tyro’s country life ended when his master went to study medicine. One day I was surprised to find him sitting on the seat beside me. The attendant was about to remove him.

“Let alone the poor dog,” said Professor L. “I am certain he will listen more quietly than any one here.” Then after the lecture, “Thank you, doggie; you have taught my students a lesson.” That naughty chain prevented a repetition of the offence; but how exuberant he was to meet me at evening any one may guess. Till next morning he was my second shadow. More than once, too, he has been a rather too faithful ally in the many silly escapades into which youth and spirits lead the medical student. His use was to cover a retreat, and only once did he floor a too-obtrusive Bobby; and once he saved me from an ugly death.

It was Hogmanay – the last night of the year – and we had been merry. We, a jolly party of students, had elected to sing in the New Year. We did so, and had been very happy, while, as Burns hath it, Tyro —

“For vera joy had barkit wi’ us.”

Ringing out from every corner of the city, like cocks with troubled minds, came the musical voices of night-watchmen, bawling “half-past one,” as we left the streets, and proceeded towards our home in the suburbs. It was a goodly night, moon and stars, and all that sort of thing, which tempted me to set out on a journey of ten miles into the country, in order to be “first foot” to some relations that lived there. The road was crisp with frost, and walking pleasant enough, so that we were in one hour nearly half-way. About here was a bridge crossing a little rocky ravine, with a babbling stream some sixty feet below. On the low stone parapet of this bridge, like the reckless fool I was, I stretched myself at full length, and, unintentionally, fell fast asleep. How nearly that sleep had been my last! Two hours afterwards I awoke, and naturally my eyes sought the last thing they had dwelt upon, the moon; she had declined westward, and in turning round I was just toppling over when I was sharply pulled backwards toward the road. Here was Tyro with his two paws pressed firmly against the parapet, and part of my coat in his mouth, while with flashing teeth he growled as I never before had heard him. His anger, however, was changed into the most exuberant joy, when I alighted safely on the road, shuddering at the narrow escape I had just made. At the suggestion of Tyro, we danced round each other, for five minutes at least, in mutual joy, by which time we were warm enough to finish our journey, and be “first foot” to our friends in the morning.

When Tyro left home with me to begin a seafaring life, he put his whole heart and soul into the business. There was more than one dog in the ship, but his drawing-room manners and knowledge of “sentry-go” made him saloon dog par excellence.

His first voyage was to the Polar regions, and his duty the protection by night of the cabin stores, including the spirit room. This duty he zealously performed; in fact, Master Tyro would have cheerfully undertaken to take charge of the whole ship, and done his best to repel boarders, if the occasion had demanded it.

A sailor’s life was now for a time the lot of Tyro. I cannot, however, say he was perfectly happy; no dog on board ship is. He missed the wide moors and the heathy hills, and I’m sure, like his master, he was always glad to go on shore again.

Poor Tyro got old; and so I had to go to sea without him. Then this dog attached himself to my dear mother. When I returned home again, she was gone…

Strange to say, Tyro, who during my poor mother’s illness had never left her room, refused food for days after her death.

He got thin, and dropsy set in.

With my own hand, I tapped him no less than fifteen times, removing never less than one gallon and three quarters of water. The first operation was a terrible undertaking, owing to the dog making such fierce resistance; but afterwards, when he began to understand the immense relief it afforded him, he used to submit without even a sigh, allowing himself to be strapped down without a murmur, and when the operation (excepting the stab of the trocar, there is little or no pain) was over, he would give himself a shake, then lick the hands of all the assistants – generally four – and present a grateful paw to each; then he had his dinner, and next day was actually fit to run down a rabbit or hare.

Thinner and weaker, weaker and thinner, month by month, and still I could not, as some advised, “put him out of pain;” he had once saved my life, and I did not feel up to the mark in Red Indianism. And so the end drew nigh.

The saddest thing about it was this: the dog had the idea (knowing little of the mystery of death) that I could make him well; and at last, when he could no longer walk, he used to crawl to meet me on my morning visit, and gaze in my face with his poor imploring eyes, and my answer (well he knew what I said) was always, “Tyro, doggie, you’ll be better the morn (to-morrow), boy.” And when one day I could stand it no longer, and rained tears on my old friend’s head, he crept back to his bed, and that same forenoon he was dead.

Poor old friend Tyro. Though many long years have fled since then, I can still afford a sigh to his memory.

On a “dewy simmer’s gloaming” my Tyro’s coffin was laid beneath the sod, within the walls of a noble old Highland ruin. There is no stone to mark where he lies, but I know the spot, and I always think the gowan blinks bonniest and the grass grows greenest there.

Chapter Seventeen.

The Days When we went Cruising

“O’er the glad waters of the dark-blue sea,Our thoughts as boundless and ourselves as free.”Byron.

When cruising round Africa some years ago in a saucy wee gunboat, that shall be nameless, I was not only junior assistant surgeon, but I was likewise head surgeon, and chief of the whole medical department, and the whole of that department consisted of – never a soul but myself. As we had only ninety men all told, the Admiralty couldn’t afford a medical officer of higher standing than myself. I was ably assisted, however, in my arduous duties, which, by the way, occupied me very nearly half an hour every morning, after, not before, breakfast, by the loblolly boy “Sugar o’ Lead.” I don’t suppose he was baptised Sugar o’ Lead. I don’t think it is likely ever he was baptised at all. This young gentleman used to make my poultices, oatmeal they were made of, of course – I’m a Scot. But Sugar o’ Lead always put salt in them, ate one half and singed the rest. He had also to keep the dispensary clean, which he never did, but he used to rub the labels off the bottles, three at a time, and stick them on again, but usually on the wrong bottles. This kept me well up in my pharmacy; but when one day I gave a man a dose of powder of jalap, instead of Gregory, Sugar o’ Lead having changed the labels, the man said “it were a kinder rough on him.” Sugar o’ Lead thought he knew as much as I, perhaps; but Epsom salts and sulphate of zinc, although alike in colour, are very different in their effects when given internally. Sugar o’ Lead had a different opinion. Another of the duties which devolved upon Sugar o’ Lead was to clean up after the dogs. At this he was quite at home. At night he slept with the monkeys. Although the old cockatoo couldn’t stand him, Sugar o’ Lead and the monkeys were on very friendly terms; they lived together on that great and broad principle which binds the whole of this mighty world of ours together, the principle of “You favour me to-day and I’ll favour you to-morrow.” Sugar o’ Lead and the monkeys acted upon it in quite the literal sense.

At Symon’s Town, I was in the habit of constantly going on shore to prospect, gun in hand, over the mountains. Grand old hills these are, too, here and there covered with bush, with bold rocky bluffs abutting from their summits, their breasts bedecked with the most gorgeous geraniums, and those rare and beautiful heaths, which at home you can only find in hot-houses.

My almost constant attendant was a midshipman, a gallant young Scotchman, whom you may know by the name of Donald McPhee, though I knew him by another.

The very first day of our many excursions “in the pursuit of game,” we were wading through some scrub, about three or four miles from the shore, when suddenly my companion hailed me thus: “Look-out, doctor, there’s a panther yonder, and he’s nearest you.”

So he was; but then he wasn’t a panther at all, but a very large Pointer. I shouldn’t like to say that he was good enough for the show bench; he was, however, good enough for work. Poor Panther, doubtless he now rests with his fathers, rests under the shadow of some of the mighty mountains, the tartaned hills, over which he and I used to wander in pursuit of game. On his grave green lizards bask, and wild cinerarias bloom, while over it glides the shimmering snake; but the poor, faithful fellow blooms fresh in my memory still. I think I became his special favourite. Perhaps he was wise enough to admire the Highland dress I often wore. Perhaps he thought, as I did, that of all costumes, that was the best one for hill work. But the interest he took in everything I did was remarkable. He seemed rejoiced to see me when I landed, as betokened by the wagging tail, the lowered ears, slightly elevated chin, and sparkling eye – a canine smile.

“Doctor,” he seemed to say, “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming. But won’t we have a day of it, just?”

And away we would go, through the busy town and along the sea beach, where the lisping wavelets broke melodiously on sands of silvery sheen, where many a monster medusa lay stranded, looking like huge umbrellas made of jelly, and on, and on, until we came to a tiny stream, up whose rocky banks we would scramble, skirting the bush, and arriving at last at the great heath land. We followed no beaten track, we went here, there, and everywhere. The scenery was enchantingly wild and beautiful, and there was health and its concomitant happiness in every breeze. Sometimes we would sit dreamily on a rock top, Panther and I, for an hour at a time, vainly trying to drink in all the beauties of the scene. How bright was the blue of the distant sea! How fleecy the cloudlets! How romantic and lovely that far-off mountain range, its rugged outline softened by the purple mists of distance! These everlasting mountains we could people with people of our own imagination. I peopled them with foreign fairies. Panther, I think, peopled them with rock rabbits. Weary at last with gazing on the grandeur everywhere around us, we would rivet our attention for a spell upon things less romantic – bloater paste and sea biscuit. I shared my lunch with Panther.

Panther was most civil and obliging; he not only did duty as a pointer and guide, but he would retrieve as well, rock rabbits and rats, and such; and as he saw me bag them, he would look up in my face as much as to say —

“Now aren’t you pleased? Don’t you feel all over joyful? Wouldn’t you wag a tail if you had one? I should think so.”

Panther wouldn’t retrieve black snakes.

“No,” said Panther, “I draw the line at black snakes, doctor.”

I would fain have taken him to sea with me, as he belonged to no one; but Panther said, “No, I cannot go.”

“Then good-bye, dear friend,” I said.

“Farewell,” said Panther.

And so we parted.

He looked wistfully after the boat as it receded from the shore. I believe, poor fellow, he knew he would never see me again.

Conceive, if you can, of the lonesomeness, the dreariness of going to sea without a dog. But as Panther wouldn’t come with me, I had to sail without him. As the purple mountains grew less and less distinct, and shades of evening gathered around us, and twinkling lights from rocky points glinted over the waters, I could only lean over the taffrail and sing —

“Happy land! happy land!Who would leave the glorious land?”

Who indeed? but sailor-men must. And now darkness covers the ocean, and hides the distant land, and next we were out in the midst of just as rough a sea as any one need care to be in. My only companion at this doleful period of my chequered career was a beautiful white pigeon. Here is how I came by him. Out at the Cape, in many a little rocky nook, and by many a rippling stream, grow sweet flowerets that come beautifully out in feather work. Feather-flower making then was one of my chief delights and amusements; the art had been taught me by a young friend of mine, whose father grew wine and kept hunters (jackal-hunting), and had kindly given me “the run” of the house. Before leaving, on the present cruise, I had secured some particularly beautiful specimens of flowers, too delicate to be imitated by anything, save the feathers of a pigeon; so I had bought a pure white one, which I had ordered to be killed and sent off.

“Steward,” I cried, as we were just under weigh, “did a boy bring a white pigeon for me?”

“He did, sir; and I put it in your cabin in its basket, which I had to give him sixpence extra for.”

“But why,” said I, “didn’t you tell him to put his nasty old basket on his back and take it off with him?”

“Because,” said the steward, “the bird would have flown away.”

“Flown away!” I cried. “Is the bird alive then?”

“To be sure, sir,” said the steward.

“To be sure, you blockhead,” said I; “how can I make feather-flowers from a live pigeon?”

The man was looking at me pityingly, I thought.

“Can’t you kill it, sir? Give him to me, sir; I’ll Wring his neck in a brace of shakes.”

“You’d never wring another neck, steward,” I said; “you’d lose the number of your mess as sure as a gun.”

When I opened the basket, knowing what rogues nigger-boys are, I fully expected to find a bird with neither grace nor beauty, and about the colour of an old white clucking hen. The boy had not deceived me, however. The pigeon was a beauty, and as white as a Spitzbergen snow-bird. Out he flew, and perched on a clothes-peg in my bulkhead, and said —

“Troubled wi’ you. Tr-rooubled with you.”

“You’ll need,” said I, “to put up with the trouble for six months to come, for we’re messmates. Steward,” I continued, “your fingers ain’t itching, are they, to kill that lovely creature?”

“Not they,” said the fellow; “I wouldn’t do it any harm for the world.”

“There’s my rum bottle,” I said; “it always stands in that corner, and it is always at your service while you tend upon the pigeon.”

The cruise before, we had a black cat on board, that the sailors looked upon as a bird of evil omen, for we got no luck, caught no slavers, ran three times on shore, and were once on fire. This cruise, we had lots of prize-money, and never a single mishap, and the men put it all down to “the surgeon’s pet,” as they called my bird. He was a pet, too. I made him a nest in a leathern hat-box, where he went when the weather was rough. He was tame, loving, and winning in all his ways, and always scrupulously white and clean.