Moreover, winter is that season in which the world lies most vigilantly and insolently in ambush against our liberties and our virtues, and least willingly grants us a uniform and serene existence, an existence of seclusion and of quiet preoccupation, and so it happens that often the city draws me to itself a second time in one day—in the evening—when Society demands its rights. Then, late, at midnight, the last tram deposits me far out at its penultimate stop. Or I come jogging along on foot, long after the last tram has returned to town—I come wandering distrait, tempered with wine, smoking, having passed the bourne of natural fatigue and wrapped in a sense of false security in relation to all things mundane. And then it happens that the embodiment of my own domesticity, as it were, my very retirement, comes to meet me and salutes and welcomes me not only without reproach or touchiness, but with extreme joy, and reintroduces me to my own fireside—all in the shape of Bashan himself. It is pitch dark, and the river goes by with a rushing sound as I turn into the poplar avenue. A few steps more and I feel that I am be-capered and be-switched by paws and tail—and have no clear idea of what is happening to me.
“Bashan?” I ask of the darkness.
And then the capering and the switching are intensified to the utmost. They pass into something dervish- and Berserker-like, though the silence continues. The very moment I stand still I feel two homely and wet and muddy paws upon the lapels of my overcoat, and there are such violent snappings and lappings close to my face, that I bend backward, whilst I pat those lean shoulders, wet with rain or snow.
Yes, the dear fellow has waited for me at the tram-stop, well aware of my comings and goings and doings; he had gone forth when the hour seemed to have arrived, and waited for me at the station—waited, perhaps, a long and weary while in the snow or rain. And his joy at my arrival is devoid of all resentment at my cruel faithlessness, even though I had utterly neglected him today and reduced all his hopes and expectances to naught. So I am loud in my praise of him as I pat his shoulders and we turn towards home. I tell him that he has acted nobly, and deliver myself of momentous promises with regard to the day which is already under way. I assure him (that is to say not so much him as myself) that we shall go hunting together tomorrow without fail, no matter what the weather. Amidst resolutions such as these, my mood of universality evaporates, seriousness and sobriety slink back into my soul, and my fancy, now full of the hunting-grounds and their loneliness, is seized by apperceptions of higher, secret and wondrous obligations.
But I am moved to add further details to this transcript of Bashan’s character, so that the willing reader may see it in the nth degree of vivid verisimilitude. I might perhaps proceed with more or less skill by drawing a comparison between Bashan and the lamented Percy, for a contrariety more sharply defined than that which distinguished their respective natures is scarcely conceivable within one and the same species. As a basic consideration one must remember that Bashan enjoys perfect mental health, whilst Percy, as I have already intimated, was—as is not uncommon with dogs of blue-blooded pedigrees—a perfect fool his whole life long, crazy, a very model of overbred impossibility. Mention of this has been made in a more momentous connection, in a previous chapter.
I would merely mention here as a contrast Bashan’s simple and popular ways as these manifest themselves when going for walks or when making salutations—occasions upon which the enunciation of his emotions remains within the bounds of common sense and a sound heartiness without ever touching the limits of hysteria—limits which Percy often transgressed on these occasions and that in the most disconcerting fashion.
But the whole antithesis between the two creatures is by no means exhausted in this—for this antithesis is in truth a mixed and complicated one. Bashan, you must know, is somewhat crude, like the common people themselves, but, like them, also soft and sentimental, whilst his noble predecessor combined more delicacy and possibilities of pain with an incomparably prouder and firmer spirit, and despite his silliness, far excelled that old yokel Bashan in the matter of self-discipline. It is not in defence of an aristocratic cult of values that I call attention to this mixture of opposite qualities, of coarseness and tenderness, of delicacy and resolution, but purely in the interests of life and actuality. Bashan, for example, is just the man for spending even the coldest winter nights in the open, that is on the straw behind the coarse burlap curtains of his kennel. A slight affection of the bladder prevents him from spending seven hours uninterruptedly in a locked room without committing a nuisance—a weakness of his which caused us to lock him out during the inhospitable time of the year, setting a justifiable faith in his robust health. Only once, after a particularly icy and foggy night, did he make his appearance with moustaches and goatee miraculously frosted and iced and with that jerky, one-syllabic cough peculiar to dogs—but a few hours, and lo, he had conquered the cold and was none the worse for it.
But never would we have dared to expose the silken-haired Percy to the inclemency of such a night. On the other hand, Bashan stands in great fear of even the slightest pain, and every twinge wrings from him a
