The Whistle

Mrs. Penwin gave one of her nervous little screams when she saw the dog.

‘Oh, Charlie!’ she cried. ‘You surely haven’t bought it!’ and her little brow, that she tried so fiercely to keep smooth, puckered into its customary little gathering of wrinkles.

The dog, taking an instant dislike to her, sank his head between his shoulders. He was an Alsatian.

‘Well . . .’ said Charlie, smiling nervously. He knew that his impulsiveness had led him once more astray. ‘Only the other evening you were saying that you’d like a dog.’

‘Yes, but not an Alsatian! You know what Alsatians are. We read about them in the paper every day. They are simply not to be trusted. I’m sure he looks as vicious as anything. And what about Mopsa?’

‘Oh, Mopsa . . .’ Charlie hesitated. ‘He’ll be all right. You see, Sibyl, it was charity really. The Sillons are going to London as you know. They simply can’t take him. It wouldn’t be fair. They’ve found it difficult enough in Edinburgh as it is.’

‘I’m sure they are simply getting rid of him because he’s vicious.’

‘No, Maude Sillon assured me. He’s like a lamb——’

‘Oh, Maude! She’d say anything!’

‘You know that you’ve been wanting a companion for Mopsa——’

‘A companion for Mopsa! That’s good!’ Sibyl laughed her shrill little laugh that was always just out of tune.

‘Well, we’ll try him. We can easily get rid of him. And Blake shall look after him.’

‘Blake!’ She was scornful. She detested Blake, but he was too good a chauffeur to lose.

‘And he’s most awfully handsome. You can’t deny it.’

She looked. Yes, he was most awfully handsome. He had lain down, his head on his paws, staring in front of him, quite motionless. He seemed to be waiting ironically until he should be given his next command. The power in those muscles, moulded under the skin, must be terrific. His long wolf ears lay flat. His colour was lovely, here silver-grey, there faintly amber. Yes, he was a magnificent dog. A little like Blake in his strength, silence, sulkiness.

She turned again to the note that she was writing.

‘We’ll try him if you like. Anyway there are no children about. It’s Blake’s responsibility—and the moment he’s tiresome he goes.’

Charlie was relieved. It hadn’t been so bad after all.

‘Oh, Blake says he doesn’t mind. In fact he seemed to take to the dog at once. I’ll call him.’

He went to the double windows that opened into the garden and called: ‘Blake! Blake!’

Blake came. He was still in his chauffeur’s uniform, having just driven his master and the dog in from Keswick. He was a very large man, very fair in colouring, plainly of great strength. His expression was absolutely English in its complete absence of curiosity, its certainty that it knew the best about everything, its suspicion, its determination not to be taken in by anybody, and its latent kindliness. He had very blue eyes and was clean-shaven; his cap was in his hand, and his hair, which was fair almost to whiteness, lay roughly across his forehead. He was not especially neat but of a quite shining cleanliness.

The dog got up and moved towards him. Both the Penwins were short and slight; they looked now rather absurdly small beside the man and the dog.

‘Look here, Blake,’ said Charlie Penwin, speaking with much authority, ‘Mrs. Penwin is nervous about the dog. He’s your responsibility, mind, and if there’s the slightest bit of trouble, he goes. You understand that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Blake, looking at the dog. ‘But there won’t be no trouble.’

‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say,’ remarked Mrs. Penwin sharply, looking up from her note. ‘How can you be sure, Blake? You know how uncertain Alsatians are. I don’t know what Mr. Penwin was thinking about.’

Blake said nothing. Once again and for the hundred-thousandth time both the Penwins wished that they could pierce him with needles. It was quite terrible the way that Blake didn’t speak when expected to, but then he was so wonderful a chauffeur, so good a driver, so excellent a mechanic, so honest—and Clara, his wife, was an admirable cook.

‘You’d better take the dog with you now, Blake. What’s his name?’

‘Adam,’ said Charlie.

‘Adam! What a foolish name for a dog! Now don’t disturb Clara with him, Blake. Clara hates to have her kitchen messed up.’

Blake, without a word, turned and went, the dog following closely at his heels.

Yes, Clara hated to have her kitchen messed up. She was standing now, her sleeves rolled up, her plump hands and wrists covered with dough. Mopsa, the Sealyham, sat at her side, his eyes, glistening with greed, raised to those doughy arms. But at sight of the Alsatian he turned instantly and flew at his throat. He was a dog who prided himself on fighting instantly every other dog. With human beings he was mild and indifferently amiable. Children could do what they would with him. He was exceedingly conceited, and cared for no one but himself.

He was clever, however, and hid this indifference from many sentimental human beings.

Blake with difficulty separated the two dogs. The Alsatian behaved quite admirably, simply restraining the Sealyham and looking up at Blake, saying, ‘I won’t let myself go here although I should like to. I know that you would rather I didn’t.’ The Sealyham, breathing deeply, bore the Alsatian no grudge. He was simply determined that he should have no foothold here.

Torrents of words poured from Clara. She had always as much to say as her husband had little. She said the same thing many times over as though she had an idiot to deal with. She knew that her husband was not an idiot—very far from it—but she had for many years been trying to make some impression on him. Defeated beyond hope, all she could now do was to resort to old and familiar tactics. What was this great savage dog? Where had he come from? Surely the mistress didn’t approve, and she wouldn’t have the kitchen messed up, not for anybody, and as Harry (Blake) very well knew nothing upset her like a dog-fight, and if they were going to be perpetual, which knowing Mopsa’s character they probably would be, she must just go to Mrs. Penwin and tell her that, sorry though she was after being with her all these years, she just couldn’t stand it and would have to go, for if there was one thing more than another that really upset her it was a dog-fight and as Harry knew having her kitchen messed up was a thing that she couldn’t stand. She paused and began vehemently to roll her dough. She was short and plump with fair hair and blue eyes like her husband’s. When excited, little glistening beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. No one in this world knew whether Blake was fond of her or no. Clara Blake least of all. She wondered perpetually; this uncertainty and her cooking were her two principal interests in life. There were times when Blake seemed very fond of her indeed, others when he appeared not to be aware that she existed.

All he said now was: ‘The dog won’t be no trouble,’ then went out, the dog at his heels. The Sealyham thought for a moment that he would follow him, then, with a little sniff of greed, settled himself down again at Clara Blake’s feet.

The two went out into the thin misty autumn sunshine, down through the garden into the garage. The Alsatian walked very closely beside Blake as though some invisible cord held them together. All his life, now two years in length, it had been his instant principle to attach himself to somebody. For, in this curious world where he was, not his natural world at all, every breath, every movement, rustle of wind, sound of voices, patter of rain, ringing of bells, filled him with nervous alarm. He went always on guard, keeping his secret soul to himself, surrendering nothing, a captive in the country of the enemy. There might exist a human being to whom he would surrender himself. Although he had been attached to several he had not, in his two years, yet found one to whom he could give himself. Now as he trod softly over the amber and rosy leaves he was not sure that this man beside whom he walked might not be the one.

In the garage Blake took off his coat, put on his blue overalls, and began to work. The dog stretched himself out on the stone floor, his head on his paws, and waited. Once and again he started, his pointed ears pricked, at some unexpected sound. A breeze blew the brown leaves up and down in the sun, and the white road beyond the garage pierced like a shining bone the cloudless sky.

Blake’s thoughts ran, as they always did, with slow assurance. This was a fine dog. He’d known the first moment that he set eyes on him that this was the dog for him. At that first glance something in his heart had been satisfied, something that had for years been unfulfilled. For they had had no children, he and Clara, and a motor-car was fine to drive and look after, but after all it couldn’t give you everything, and he wasn’t one to make friends (too damned cautious), and the people he worked for were all right but nothing extra, and he really didn’t know whether he cared for Clara or no. It was so difficult after so many years married to tell. There were lots of times when he couldn’t sort of see her at all.

He began to take out the sparking-plugs to clean them. That was the worst of these Heldsons, fine cars, as good as any going, but you had to be for ever cleaning the sparking-plugs. Yes, that dog was a beauty. He was going to take to that dog.

The dog looked at him, stared at him as though he were saying something. Blake looked at the dog. Then, with a deep sigh, as though some matter, for long uncertain, were at last completely settled, the dog rested again his head on his paws, staring in front of him, and so fell asleep. Blake, softly whistling, continued his work.

A very small factor, in itself quite unimportant, can bring into serious conflict urgent forces. So it was now when this dog Adam came into the life of the Penwins.

Mrs. Penwin, like so many English wives and unlike all American wives, had never known so much domestic power as she desired. Her husband was of course devoted to her, but he was for ever just escaping her, escaping her into that world of men that is so important in England, that is, even in these very modern days, still a world in the main apart from women.

Charlie Penwin had not very many opportunities to escape from his wife and he was glad that he had not, for when they came he took them. His ideal was the ideal of most English married men (and of very few American married men), namely, that he should be a perfect companion to his wife. He fulfilled this ideal; they were excellent companions, the two of them, so excellent that it was all the more interesting and invigorating when he could go away for a time and be a companion to someone else, to Willie Shaftoe for instance, with whom he sometimes stayed in his place near Carlisle, or even for a day’s golf with the Rev. Thomas Bird, rector of a church in Keswick.

Mrs. Penwin, in fact, had never quite, in spite of his profound devotion to her, never entirely captured the whole of her husband—a small fragment eternally escaped her, and this escape was a very real grievance to her. Like a wise woman she did not make scenes—no English husband can endure scenes—but she was always attempting to stop up this one little avenue of escape. But most provoking! So soon as one avenue was closed another would appear.

She realised very quickly (for she was not at all a fool) that this Alsatian was assisting her husband to escape from her because his presence in their household was bringing him into closer contact with Blake. Both the Penwins feared Blake and admired him; to friends and strangers they spoke of him with intense pride—‘What we should do without Blake I can’t think!’—‘But aren’t we lucky in these days to have a chauffeur whom we can completely trust?’

Nevertheless, behind these sentiments, there was this great difference, that Mrs. Penwin disliked Blake extremely (whenever he looked at her he made her feel a weak, helpless and idiotic woman), while Charlie Penwin, although he was afraid of him, in his heart liked him very much indeed.

If Blake only were human, little Charlie Penwin, who was a sentimentalist, used to think—and now, suddenly, Blake was human. He had gone ‘dotty’ about this dog, and the dog followed him like a shadow. So close were they the one to the other that you could almost imagine that they held conversations together.

Then Blake came in to his master’s room one day to ask whether Adam could sleep in his room. He had a small room next to Mrs. Blake’s, because he was often out late with the car at night and must rise very early in the morning. Clara Blake liked to have her sleep undisturbed.

‘You see, sir,’ he said, ‘he won’t sort of settle down in the outhouse. He’s restless: I know he is.’

‘How do you know he is?’ asked Charlie Penwin.

‘I can sort of feel it, sir. He won’t be no sort of trouble in my room, and he’ll be a fine guard to the house at night.’

The two men looked at one another and were in that moment friends. They both smiled.

‘Very well, Blake. I don’t think there’s anything against it.’

Of course there were things against it. Mrs. Penwin hated the idea of the dog sleeping in the house. She did not really hate it; what she hated was that Blake and her husband should settle this thing without a word to her. Nor, when she protested, would her husband falter. Blake wanted it. It would be a good protection for the house.

Blake discovered a very odd whistle with which he called the dog. Putting two fingers into his mouth he called forth this strange note that seemed to penetrate into endless distance and that had in it something mysterious, melancholy and dangerous. It was musical and inhuman; friends of the Penwins, comfortably at tea, would hear this thin whistling cry coming, it seemed, from far away beyond the Fells, having in it some part of the Lake and the distant sea tumbling on Drigg sands, and of the lonely places in Eskdale and Ennerdale.

‘What’s that?’ they would say, looking up.

‘Oh, it’s Blake calling his dog.’

‘What a strange whistle!’

‘Yes, it’s the only one the dog hears.’

The dog did hear it, at any distance, in any place. When Blake went with the car the Alsatian would lie on the upper lawn whence he could see the road, and wait for his return.

He would both see and hear the car’s return, but he would not stir until Blake, released from his official duties, could whistle to him—then with one bound he would be up, down the garden, and with his front paws up against Blake’s chest would show him his joy.

To all the rest of the world he was indifferent. But he was not hostile. He showed indeed an immense patience, and especially with regard to the Sealyham.

The dog Mopsa attempted twice at least every day to kill the Alsatian. He succeeded in biting him severely, but so long as Blake was there Adam showed an infinite control, letting Blake part them although every instinct in him was stirred to battle.

But, after a time, Blake became clever at keeping the two dogs separate; moreover, the Sealyham became afraid of Blake. He was clever enough to realise that when he fought the Alsatian he fought Blake as well—and Blake was too much for him.

Very soon, however, Blake was at war not only with the Sealyham but with his wife and Mrs. Penwin too. You might think that the words ‘at war’ were too strong when nothing was to be seen on the surface. Mrs. Blake said nothing, Mrs. Penwin said nothing, Blake himself said nothing.

Save for the fights with the Sealyham there was no charge whatever to bring against the Alsatian. He was never in anyone’s way, he brought no dirt into the house, whenever Charlie Penwin took him in the car he sat motionless on the back seat, his wolf ears pricked up, his large and beautiful eyes sternly regarding the outside world, but his consciousness fixed only upon Blake’s back, broad and masterly above the wheel.

No charge could be brought against him except that the devotion between the man and the dog was, in this little house of ordered emotions, routine habits, quiet sterility, almost terrible. Mrs. Blake, as her husband left her one night to return to his own room, broke out:

‘If you’d loved me as you love that dog I’d have had a different life.’

Blake patted her shoulder, moist beneath her night-dress.

‘I love you all right, my girl,’ he said.

And Mrs. Penwin found that here she could not move her husband.

Again and again she said:

‘Charlie, that dog’s got to go.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s dangerous.’

‘I don’t see it.’

‘Somebody will be bitten one day and then you will see it.’

‘There’s a terrible lot of nonsense talked about Alsatians. . . .’

And then, when everyone was comfortable, Mrs. Blake reading her Home Chat, Mrs. Penwin her novel, Mrs. Fern, Mrs. Penwin’s best friend, doing a ‘crossword,’ over the misty dank garden, carried, it seemed, by the muffled clouds that floated above the Fell, would sound that strange melancholy whistle, so distant and yet so near, Blake calling his dog.

For Blake himself life was suddenly, and for the first time, complete. He had not known, all this while, what it was that he missed, although he had known that he missed something.

Had Mrs. Blake given him a child he would have realised completion. Mrs. Blake alone had not been enough for his heart. In this dog he found fulfilment because here were all the things that he admired—loyalty, strength, courage, self-reliance, fidelity, comradeship, and above all, sobriety of speech and behaviour. Beyond these there was something more—love. He did not, even to himself, admit the significance of this yet deeper contact. And he analysed nothing.

For the dog, life in this dangerous menacing country of the enemy was at last secure and simple. He had only one thing to do, only one person to consider.

But of course life is not so simple as this for anybody. A battle was being waged and it must have an issue. The Penwins were not in Cumberland during the winter. They went to their little place in Sussex, very close to London and to all their London friends. Mrs. Penwin would not take the Alsatian to Sussex. But why not? asked Charlie. She hated it, Mrs. Blake hated it. That, said Charlie, was not reason enough.

‘Do you realise,’ said Mrs. Penwin theatrically, ‘that this dog is dividing us?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Charlie.

‘It is not nonsense. I believe you care more for Blake than you do for me.’ She cried. She cried very seldom. Charlie Penwin was uncomfortable, but some deep male obstinacy was roused in him. This had become an affair of the sexes. Men must stand together and protect themselves or they would be swept away in this feminine flood. . . .

Blake knew, Mrs. Blake knew, Mrs. Penwin knew, that the dog would go with them to Sussex unless some definite catastrophe gave Mrs. Penwin the victory. As he lay on his bed at night, seeing the grey wolf-like shadow of the dog stretched on the floor, Blake’s soul for the first time in its history trembled at the thought of the slight movement, incident, spoken word, sound, that might rouse the dog beyond his endurance and precipitate the catastrophe. The dog was behaving magnificently, but he was surrounded by his enemies. Did he know what hung upon his restraint?

Whether he knew or no, the catastrophe arrived, and arrived with the utmost, most violent publicity. On a sun-gleaming russet October afternoon, on the lawn, while Charlie was giving Blake instructions about the car, and Mrs. Penwin put in also her word, Mopsa attacked the Alsatian, Blake ran to separate them, and the Alsatian, sharply bitten, bewildered, humiliated, snapped and caught Blake’s leg between his teeth. A moment later he and Blake knew, both of them, what he had done. Blake would have hidden it, but blood was flowing. In the Alsatian’s heart remorse, terror, love, and a sense of disaster, a confirmation of all that, since his birth, knowing the traps that his enemies would lay for him, he had suspected, leapt to life together.

Disregarding all else he looked up at Blake.

‘And that settles it!’ cried Mrs. Penwin, triumphantly. ‘He goes!’

Blake’s leg was badly bitten in three places; they would be scars for life. And it was settled. Before the week was out the dog would be returned to his first owners, who did not want him, who would give him to someone else who also, in turn, through fear or shyness of neighbours, would not want him. . . .

Two days after this catastrophe Mrs. Blake went herself to Mrs. Penwin.

‘My husband’s that upset . . . I wouldn’t care if the dog stays, Mum.’

‘Why, Clara, you hate the dog.’

‘Oh, well, Mum, Blake’s a good husband to me. I don’t like to see him . . .’

‘Why, what has he said?’

‘He hasn’t said anything, Mum.’

But Mrs. Penwin shook her head. ‘No, Clara, it’s ridiculous. The dog’s dangerous.’

And Blake went to Charlie Penwin. The two men faced one another and were closer together, fonder of one another, man caring for man, than they had ever been before.

‘But, Blake, if the dog bites you whom he cares for . . . I mean, don’t you see, he really is dangerous. . . .’

‘He wasn’t after biting me,’ said Blake slowly. ‘And if he had to bite somebody, being aggravated and nervous, he’d not find anyone better to bite than me who understands him and knows he don’t mean nothing by it.’

Charlie Penwin felt in himself a terrible disloyalty to his wife. She could go to . . . Why should not Blake have his dog? Was he for ever to be dominated by women? For a brief, rocking, threatening moment his whole stable ordered world trembled. He knew that if he said the dog was to remain the dog would remain and that something would have broken between his wife and himself that could never be mended.

He looked at Blake, who with his blue serious eyes stared steadily in front of him. He hesitated. He shook his head.

‘No, Blake, it won’t do. Mrs. Penwin will never be easy now while the dog is there.’

Later in the day Blake did an amazing thing. He went to Mrs. Penwin.

During all these years he had never voluntarily, himself, gone to Mrs. Penwin. He had never gone unless he were sent for. She looked at him and felt as she always did, dislike, admiration, and herself a bit of a fool.

‘Well, Blake?’

‘If the dog stays I’ll make myself responsible. He shan’t bite nobody again.’

‘But how can you tell? You said he wouldn’t bite anyone before, and he did?’

‘He won’t again.’

‘No, Blake, he’s got to go. I shan’t have a moment’s peace while he’s here.’

‘He’s a wonderful dog. I’ll have him trained so he won’t hurt a fly. He’s like a child with me.’

‘I’m sure he is. Irresponsible like a child. That’s why he bit you.’

‘I don’t make nothing of his biting me.’

‘You may not, but next time it will be someone else. There’s something in the paper about them every day.’

‘He’s like a child with me.’

‘I’m very sorry, Blake. I can’t give way about it. You’ll see I’m right in the end. My husband ought never to have accepted the dog at all.’

After Blake had gone she did not know why, but she felt uneasy, as though she had robbed a blind man, or stolen another woman’s lover. Ridiculous! There could be no question but that she was right.

Blake admitted that to himself. She was right. He did not criticise her, but he did not know what to do. He had never felt like this in all his life before, as though part of himself were being torn from him.

On the day before the dog was to go back to his original owners, Blake was sent into Keswick to make some purchases. It was a soft bloomy day, one of those North English autumn days when there is a scent of spices in the sharp air and a rosy light hangs in shadow about the trees. Blake had taken the dog with him, and driving back along the Lake, seeing how it lay a sheet of silver glass upon whose surface the islands were painted in flat colours of auburn and smoky grey, a sudden madness seized him. It was the stillness, the silence, the breathless pause. . . .

Instead of turning to the right over the Grange bridge he drove the car straight on into Borrowdale. It was yet early in the afternoon; all the lovely valley lay in gold leaf at the feet of the russet hills and no cloud moved in the sky. He took the car to Seatoller and climbed with the dog the steep path towards Honister.

And the dog thought that at last what he had longed for was to come to pass. He and Blake were at length free; they would go on and on, leaving all the stupid, nerve-jumping world behind them, never to return to it. With a wild, fierce happiness such as he had never yet shown, he bounded forward, drinking in the cold streams, feeling the strong turf beneath his feet, running back to Blake to assure him of his comradeship. At last he was free, and life was noble as it ought to be.

At the turn of the road Blake sat down and looked back. All round him were hills. Nothing moved; only the stream close to him slipped murmuring between the boulders. The hills ran ranging from horizon to horizon, and between grey clouds a silver strip of sky, lit by an invisible sun, ran like a river into mist. Blake called the dog to him and laid his hand upon his head. He knew that the dog thought that they two had escaped for ever now from the world. Well, why not? They could walk on, on to the foot of the hill on whose skyline the mining-hut stood like a listening ear, down the Pass to Buttermere, past the lake, past Crummock Water to Cockermouth. Then there would be a train. It would not be difficult for him to get work. His knowledge of cars (he had a genius for them) would serve him anywhere. And Clara? She was almost invisible, a white tiny blob on the horizon. She would find someone else. His hand tightened about the dog’s head. . . .

For a long while he sat there, the dog never moving, the silver river spreading in the sky, the hills gathering closer about him.

Suddenly he shook his head. No, he could not. He would be running away, a poor kind of cowardice. He pulled Adam’s sharp ears; he buried his face in Adam’s fur. He stood up, and Adam also stood up, placed his paws on his chest, licked his cheeks. In his eyes there shone great happiness because they two were going away alone together.

But Blake turned back down the path, and the dog, realising that there was to be no freedom, walked close behind him, brushing with his body sometimes the stuff of Blake’s trousers.

Next day Blake took the dog back to the place whence he had come.

Two days later, the dog, knowing that he was not wanted, sat watching a little girl who played some foolish game near him. She had plump bare legs; he watched them angrily. He was unhappy, lonely, nervous, once more in the land of the enemy, and now with no friend.

Through the air, mingling with the silly laughter of the child and other dangerous sounds, came, he thought, a whistle. His heart hammered. His ears were up. With all his strength he bounded towards the sound. But he was chained. To-morrow he was to be given to a Cumberland farmer.

Mrs. Penwin was entertaining two ladies at tea. This was the last day before the journey south. Across the dark lawns came that irritating, melancholy whistle, disturbing her, reproaching her—and for what?

Why, for her sudden suspicion that everything in life was just ajar—one little push and all would be in its place—but would she be married to Charlie, would Mrs. Planty there be jealous of her pretty daughter, would Miss Tennyson, nibbling now at her pink piece of icing, be nursing her aged and intemperate father. . . .? She looked up crossly—

‘Really, Charlie . . . that must be Blake whistling. I can’t think why now the dog’s gone. To let us know what he thinks about it, I suppose . . .’ She turned to her friends. ‘Our chauffeur—a splendid man—we are so fortunate. Charlie, do tell him. It’s such a hideous whistle anyway—and now the dog is gone . . .’

Lindingö, Sweden,

August 14, 1929