"You mean it is the nature of birds to be friendly with man?"

"I do. Through long ages men have been their enemies, and so have alienated them--they too not being themselves."

"You mean that unfriendliness is not natural to men?"

"It cannot be human to be cruel!"

"How is it, then, that so many boys are careless what suffering they inflict?"

"Because they have in them the blood of men who loved cruelty, and never repented of it."

"But how do you account for those men loving cruelty--for their being what you say is contrary to their nature?"

"Ah, if I could account for that, I should be at the secret of most things! All I meant to half-explain was, how it came that so many who have no wish to inflict suffering, yet are careless of inflicting it."

I saw that we must know each other better before he would quite open his mind to me. I saw that though, hospitable of heart, he threw his best rooms open to all, there were others in his house into which he did not invite every acquaintance.

The avenue led to a wide gravelled s.p.a.ce before a plain, low, long building in whitish stone, with pillared portico. In the middle of the s.p.a.ce was a fountain, and close to it a few chairs. Mr. Skymer begged me to be seated. Memnon walked up to the fountain, and lay down, that I might get off his back as easily as I had got on it. Once down, he turned on his side, and lay still.

"The air is so mild," said my host, "I fancy you will prefer this to the house."

"Mild!" I rejoined; "I should call it hot!"

"I have been so much in real heat!" he returned. "Notwithstanding my love of turf, I keep this much in gravel for the sake of the desert."

I took the seat he offered me, wondering whether Memnon was comfortable where he lay; and, absorbed in the horse, did not see my host go to the other side of the basin. Suddenly we were "clothed upon" with a house which, though it came indeed from the earth, might well have come direct from heaven: a great uprush of water spread above us a tent-like dome, through which the sun came with a cool, broken, almost frosty glitter. We seemed in the heart of a huge soap-bubble. I exclaimed with delight.

"I thought you would enjoy my sun-shade!" said Mr. Skymer. "Memnon and I often come here of a hot morning, when n.o.body wants us. Don't we, Memnon?"

The horse lifted his nose a little, and made a low soft noise, a chord of mingled obedience and delight--a moan of pleasure mixed with a half-born whinny.

We had not been seated many moments, and had scarcely pushed off the sh.o.r.e of silence into a new sea of talk, when we were interrupted by the invasion of half a dozen dogs. They were of all sorts down to no sort. Mr. Skymer called one of them Tadpole--I suppose because he had the hugest tail, while his legs were not visible without being looked for.

"That animal," said his master, "--he looks like a dog, but who would be positive what he was!--is the cleverest in the pack. He seems to me a rare individuality. His ancestors must have been of all sorts, and he has gathered from them every good quality possessed by each. Think what a man might be--made up that way!"

"Why is there no such man?" I said.

"There may be some such men. There must be many one day," he answered, "--but not for a while yet. Men must first be made willing to be n.o.ble."

"And you don't think men willing to be made n.o.ble?"

"Oh yes! willing enough, some of them, to be _made_ n.o.ble!"

"I do not understand. I thought you said they were not!"

"They are willing enough _to be made_ n.o.ble; but that is very different from being willing _to be_ n.o.ble: that takes trouble. How can any one become n.o.ble who desires it so little as not to fight for it!"

The man drew me more and more. He had a way of talking about things seldom mentioned except in dull fashion in the pulpit, as if he cared about them. He spoke as of familiar things, but made you feel he was looking out of a high window. There are many who never speak of real things except in a false tone; this man spoke of such without an atom of a.s.sumed solemnity--in his ordinary voice: they came into his mind as to their home--not as dreams of the night, but as facts of the day.

I sat for a while, gazing up through the thin veil of water at the blue sky so far beyond. I thought how like that veil was to our little life here, overdomed by that boundless foreshortening of s.p.a.ce. The lines in Sh.e.l.ley's _Adonais_ came to me:

"Life, like a dome of many-coloured gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments."

Then I thought of what my host had said concerning the too short lives of horses, and wondered what he would say about those of dogs.

"Dogs are more intelligent than horses," I said: "why do they live a yet shorter time?"

"I doubt if you would say so in an Arab's tent," he returned. "If you had said, 'still more affectionate,' I should have known better how to answer you."

"Then I do say so," I replied.

"And I return, that is just why they live no longer. They do not find the world good enough for them, die, and leave it."

"They have a much happier life than horses!"

"Many dogs than some horses, I grant."

That instant arose what I fancied must be an unusual sound in the place: two of the dogs were fighting. The master got up. I thought with myself, "Now we shall see his notions of discipline!" nor had I long to wait. In his hand was a small riding-whip, which I afterward found he always carried in avoidance of having to inflict a heavier punishment from inability to inflict a lighter; for he held that in all wrong-doing man can deal with, the kindest thing is not only to punish, but, with animals especially, to punish at once. He ran to the conflicting parties. They separated the moment they heard the sound of his coming. One came cringing and crawling to his feet; the other--it was the nondescript Tadpole--stood a little way off, wagging his tail, and c.o.c.king his head up in his master's face. He gave the one at his feet several pretty severe cuts with the whip, and sent him off. The other drew nearer. His master turned away and took no notice of him.

"May I ask," I said, when he returned to his seat, "why you did not punish both the animals for their breach of the peace?"

"They did not both deserve it."

"How could you tell that? You were not looking when the quarrel began!"

"Ah, but you see I know the dogs! One of them--I saw at a glance how it was--had found a bone, and dog-rule about finding is, that what you find is yours. The other, notwithstanding, wanted a share. It was Tadpole who found the bone, and he--partly from his sense of justice--cannot endure to have his claims infringed upon. Every dog of them knows that Tadpole must be in the right."

"He looked as if he expected you to approve of his conduct!"

"Yes, that is the worst of Tadpole! he is so self-righteous as to imagine he deserves praise for standing on his rights! He is but a dog, you see, and knows no better!"

"I noticed you disregarded his appeal."

"I was not going to praise him for nothing!"

"You expect them to understand your treatment?"

"No one can tell how infinitesimally small the beginnings of understanding, as of life, may be. The only way to make animals reasonable--more reasonable, I mean--is to treat them as reasonable. Until you can go down into the abysses of creation, you cannot know when a nature begins to see a difference in quality of action."

"I confess," I said, "Mr. Tadpole did seem a little ashamed as he went away."

"And you see Blanco White at my feet, taking care not to touch them. He is giving time, he thinks, for my anger to pa.s.s."

He laughed the merriest laugh. The dog looked up eagerly, but dropped his head again.

If I go on like this, however, I shall have to take another book to tell the story for which I began the present! In short, I was drawn to the man as never to another since the friend of my youth went where I shall go to seek and find him one day--or, more likely, one solemn night. I was greatly his inferior, but love is a quick divider of shares: he that gathers much has nothing over, and he that gathers little has no lack. I soon ceased to think of him as my _new_ friend, for I seemed to have known him before I was born.

I am going to tell the early part of his history. If only I could tell it as it deserves to be told! The most interesting story may be so narrated as that only the eyes of a Shakspere could spy the shine underneath its dull surface.