Sirius

by Olaf Stapledon

  Some time after this incident Sirius did something which was far beyond super-sheep-dog capacity.

  Throughout his first term he was desperately lonely. He longed for his own people, and most of all for Plaxy. If only he could write a letter! But he had no writing-glove, and no stationery. And anyhow the task of putting a stamp on a letter had always defeated him.

  He knew he could write a few words very badly by holding a pencil in his mouth; if he could find one, and paper. He had once seen Pugh take out pen, ink and paper from the drawer in the oak dresser. One day, when Mrs. Pugh and Jane were milking, he slipped into the kitchen, opened the drawer, and found in it several sheets of paper, also envelopes, a pen, an ink-pot, and a pencil with a broken point. He stole a sheet and an envelope. Pen and ink seemed too complicated, and the pencil was useless, so he left these, and took merely an envelope and paper to the dog's outhouse. He put them in an old packing case under some straw.

  There was now nothing for it but to wait until someone should need to sharpen the pencil. He seized every opportunity to sneak into the kitchen and look into the drawer. Meanwhile he spent much thought in planning exactly how he would write his letter, and what he would say. Sometimes he practised. Holding a splinter of slate in his mouth, he scribbled on the slate doorstep. The process was difficult, because his nose was always in the way, and he could not see what he was doing; and generally the slate-splinter snapped.

  At last, after many days, he found that the pencil had been sharpened. He took it away to the outhouse.

  Not till several days later did Sirius find an opportunity of writing his letter. In spidery capitals it said, "Dear Plaxy, I hope you are happy. I am lonely without you, terribly. Love. Sirius." With great care he addressed the envelope, hoping that his memory was trustworthy. He had serious difficulty in folding the paper and putting it into the envelope. Then he licked the gummy-edge, closed it, and held his paw on it. He had intended to post it unstamped; but the thought that Plaxy would have to pay threepence, double postage, on it distressed him so much that he decided to wait in the hope of finding some stamps in the drawer. When at last a sheet of six three-halfpenny stamps appeared, he ran off with them and set about trying to detach one. First he held the sheet between his paws and pulled with his teeth. The stamp tore across the middle, and the bit in his mouth stuck to his wet teeth, so that he could not get rid of it. Flustered by this experience, he decided to think the problem out more carefully. He hit on a plan. He held the envelope down with his paw and licked the right-hand top corner. Then with extreme care he took up the stamp-sheet in his teeth and laid it on the envelope so that one of the corner stamps was roughly in the right position. This was difficult, because as usual his nose was in the line of sight. He let go, and inspected the result, The stamp was crooked, and not wholly on the envelope. Hastily he lifted it off again and replaced it, well on the envelope. Again he inspected it, then carefully pulled it into better position. Then he pressed it on with his paw. When he thought the gum was dry, he held the sheet of stamps down with his paw and gently pulled the letter with his teeth. The letter came away, with the stamp intact, and part of the next one projecting over the edge. This he trimmed off with his teeth, He then restored the mangled sheet of stamps to the drawer. Not till he came back to the letter did he notice that the stamp was upside down.

  He hid his letter under the straw and waited till his next errand to the village. This did not occur till some days later, It was fairly common for him to be sent with letters to the post, but on this occasion his own was the only one. He trotted off with his basket and an order for the grocer; and his letter. He went straight to the post office, put down his basket, took out the letter, raised himself against the wall, and slipped the precious document into the box.

  This was no unusual sight in the village. Dr. Huw Williams, who was passing, scarcely noticed it; but when, next day, he met Mr. Pugh and wished him good day, he mentioned the incident, complimenting him on his dog's intelligence. Now Pugh had sent off no letter that day. He wondered whether his wife had written to her mother in Bala, or if Jane had entrusted Bran with a love-letter. This possibility disturbed him, for though by nature a friendly man, prone to treat people with respect and trust, he was no modern parent. When he reached home he made inquiries, Mrs. Pugh and Jane both denied that they had given Bran a letter. Pugh went to the drawer and saw that the stamps had been badly mauled. One was missing, and two others were torn. In a burst of indignation he charged his daughter with clandestine correspondence, theft, lying and cluminess, Jane defended herself with vigour, and added, "Go and ask Bran whose letter it was." That sarcasm put a wild idea into Pugh's head. He went to the drawer again and picked up the pencil. There were toothmarks on it--Bran's or his own? Fantastic doubt!

  CHAPTER VI

  BIRTH-PANGS OF A PERSONALITY

  TO Sirius, Plaxy's first term at boarding school seemed endless, but in due season the holidays loomed near. Sirius had counted the days by putting a pebble a day in the old packing-case. One day, when he had collected almost the right number of pebbles but was expecting two or three more days of labour, he returned with Pugh and the other dogs from the moors, with early snow on Pugh's hat and the dogs" backs, and encountered Thomas in the yard. Sirius rushed at him and nearly knocked him down with a wild welcome. After both men had shaken the worst of the snow from their clothes, Pugh took Thomas into the kitchen. Sirius knew that he was not supposed to go into the house when he was in a mess; but, after a violent shake, in he went. Mrs. Pugh smiled indulgently.

  Thomas asked Pugh about Sirius's success as a sheep-dog, and was given a good report. Sirius had proved himself as hardy as Idwal, and far more cunning and responsible. But he was not always quite "on the spot." He was a bit of a day-dreamer. He was sometimes caught napping. A sheep might escape from the flock and run away before Sirius woke to the situation. It was "as though he had been thinking of something else." After making the report Pugh nodded knowingly at Thomas, who merely changed the subject. Before they parted, Pugh insisted on handing over to Thomas ten shillings less fourpence halfpenny. This sum he described as Bran's earnings, "less a small item of expenditure." Saying his, he stared hard at Sirius and winked. The dog hastily looked away, but could not prevent a snort of surprise and a tremor of the tail. Thomas tried to refuse the money, but Pugh insisted.

  The journey home through driving sleet was a journey to heaven. Thomas explained that he and Elizabeth had come home a couple of days early to get the house ready before Plaxy and Giles arrived from boarding school. Tamsy and Maurice, both of them undergraduates, were visiting friends.

  Sirius recounted some of his experiences. "It has all been very good for me, I know, but I really don't think I can go on with that life any longer. I should go mad with loneliness. No talk, no books, no music. And all the while knowing the world is so big and strange beyond the farm. Plaxy will leave me far behind. "

  This speech came as a shock to the not very imaginative Thomas. He remarked cautiously, "Oh, it's not quite as bad as all that, is it? Anyhow, we must talk it over carefully." Sirius knew from his tone that he was rather put out about it, and that there would be trouble.

  Elizabeth greeted Sirius as one of her children, hugging him and kissing him. He showed none of his former boisterousness, but gave a tremulous little whine of painful joy.

  Next day Giles arrived, and in the evening Plaxy. Thomas took the car to the station to meet her, Sirius sitting beside him. Out of the train stepped the long-legged schoolgirl in her school hat and coat. Having kissed her father, no doubt with her customary rather distant affection, she squatted down to hug Sirius, "I got your letter," she whispered, "but I couldn't answer, could I?" Of course she couldn't. Sirius savoured the well-known voice with delight; but with an undertone of anxiety, for school life had changed it.

  During the first part of the holidays Sirius simply enjoyed being home again. He scarcely noticed the two disquieting facts that had obtruded the
mselves right at the beginning. Thomas would not let him off his sheep-dog apprenticeship; Plaxy was changed.

  For a week or so he was content to live the old family life, which, though by no means entirely harmonious, did afford to every member the invaluable experience of belonging to a true community. There was always talk going on, and Sirius after his long isolation felt a great need for conversation. There were many walks with members of the family, and several long expeditions up Moelwyn, the Rhinogs, Arenig. But what Sirius now craved most was indoor life, with reading, music, talk, and all the little affairs that fill the day.

  After a day or two of almost entirely social life he began to take up once more some of his old private occupations. Not only did he read as much as his eyesight would let him, and experiment a good deal in music; he also contrived adventures in his private art of odour. This he did by collecting all kinds of materials that had striking or significant smells, and blending them in saucers. Sometimes, much to the amusement of the family, he laid his materials out in a long trail round the garden path, and then followed it from beginning to end, giving tongue in a weird diversified chant that was neither human nor canine, After these olfactory adventures he was often very silent and remote. Sometimes they seemed to put him in the mood for hunting, for he would disappear for many hours, returning tired and dirty. Not infrequently he brought back a rabbit or hare, or even a wild duck or grouse, handing it over to Giles to prepare for cooking. But often he brought nothing, and behaved as though he himself had gorged.

  Not much of his time was spent in solitary occupations, for he craved social intercourse more than ever, chiefly with Plaxy. Gradually it dawned on him that when she and he were out together they did not always find the careless intimacy which formerly had never failed them. Sometimes neither of them seemed able to think of anything to say; sometimes Sirius found himself bored with Plaxy's stories of school life; sometimes she seemed to have lost interest in all the things that formerly they had enjoyed together. Sirius expected not only that she would have out-distanced him in knowledge of school subjects, which of course she had, but also that she would be more keenly and persistently interested in the life of the mind. But she was nothing of the sort, She was mainly absorbed, it seemed, in her school companions, with all their loves and hates; and in the teachers, male and female, who were playing so large a part in her new life. When he asked her to teach him some of the wonderful things that she must have learnt during the term, she said she would, some time; but always she found some excuse to postpone the lesson. At last there came a time when no excuse was available. She was idling in an easy chair petting the cat, Smut, who was purring heartily. Sirius, whose thirst for knowledge was at this time more insistent than discriminate, suggested that she should tell him what she had learnt during the term about the Cavaliers and Roundheads. Cornered, she blurted out, "Oh, I just can't swot in the holidays." He did not ask her again.

  It was not that they were any less fond of one another. On the contrary, each craved the other's society; but always there was a faint mist of remoteness between them. And occasionally open antagonism occurred, as when Plaxy ostentatiously doted upon Smut, half in jest, half in earnest, calling him "my black panther," affirming that she was a witch, and witches always had black cats as their companions, and never clumsy dogs. But antagonism was rare. More often there was a faintly awkward friendliness. At this time Plaxy developed a maiden shyness in relation to Sirius. He was bewildered, for instance, by her new and to him quite inexplicable reluctance to respond to their familiar urinary tune by singing the antistrophe that signified assent, and crouching to relieve herself. Although this new shyness was only a passing phase, it was to recur whenever Plaxy was feeling too much involved with Sirius.

  In fact her estrangement from him was partly a reaction against her deep-rooted entanglement with him. But he, who was far more conscious of her aloofness than she was herself, attributed it to the fact that she had outstripped him both in learning and in experience of human people, while he had stagnated at Caer Blai. Once or twice, however, when she had gently twitted him with being interested in nothing but learning, he wondered whether it was she that was stagnating. He had conceived a real passion for learning, for finding out about the great world, and understanding the miracle of human nature and the minor miracle of his own unique nature. The arid weeks behind him and the arid weeks to come filled him with a thirst not only for intelligent companionship but also for intellectual life. His proximity to the sub-human perhaps made him over-anxious to prove that even the loftier ranges of the human spirit were not beyond him.

  It was during these holidays that another and a long-established source of alienation between Plaxy and Sirius took on a new form and a more disturbing effect. Even in earlier days Plaxy had developed a peculiarly keen interest in seeing. As a child she had often shown disappointment and exasperation with Sirius for his failure to share this delight with her. She would rhapsodize over the colour and shape of a speedwell, or of hills receding hazily one behind the other in a cadence of russet to purple. Once she had innocently called upon him to admire the golden elegance of her own young arm. On all such occasions his response was perfunctory, since vision was never for him a gateway to heaven, Even of Plaxy's arm he could say only. "Yes, it's lovely because it has the look of a handy tool. And it smells good, like the rest of you, and it's good to lick," From childhood onwards Plaxy had amused herself with pencil and paint box, and at school her gift for colour and shape had won her much praise from the drawing mistress. In the holidays she spent a good deal of time looking at reproductions of famous pictures, and in discussing art with her mother. Even more absorbed was she in drawing schoolgirls in blatantly graceful poses, and in painting the view of the Rhinogs from her bedroom window. Sirius found all this fuss over the looks of things very boring. He had tried hard to develop a taste for pictorial art, but had failed miserably. Now that Plaxy was so absorbed in it, he felt "left out." If he took no notice of her creations she was disappointed. If he praised them, she was irritated, knowing quite well that he could not really appreciate them. Yet all this visual interest, which at bottom, no doubt, was a protest against Sirius, she also longed to share with him. Thus did these two alien but fundamentally united creatures torture one another and themselves.

  As the end of the holidays approached. Sirius's anxiety about his future increased. He took every opportunity of tackling Thomas on the subject. But Thomas always managed to turn the talk in some other direction. When at last the time came for Plaxy to return to school, it was assumed that Sirius would return to Caer Blai. When Plaxy said good-bye to him, she begged him to go back with a good grace. She herself, she said, hated leaving home. But he knew quite well from her voice and her tingling smell that, though in a way she did hate it, in another way she was glad and excited. But he--well, in a way he too was glad, surprised though he was at this discovery. He was glad to get away from the mist that had come between him and Plaxy; and also because a mist had come between him and the whole of his beloved home life. What was it? Why was there this remoteness? What was it that kept rising between him and all his dearest things, making him defiant and wild? Was it just that he wanted a fragrant bitch, a sweet though stupid companion of his own kind, instead of these stinking humans? Or did he need something more? Was it the ancestral jungle beast that sometimes woke in him? His farewell to Plaxy was seemingly all affection and sorrow. She never guessed that another and an alien Sirius was at that moment yawning himself awake, finding her company tiresome and her smell unpleasant.

  There followed a term of bitter weather and heavy work with the sheep. All the dogs were now kept busy stopping the sheep from going up to the heights for the night, for fear of snow. This meant staying with them till dark whenever snow seemed likely. Sometimes, without warning, heavy snow would fall on the tops during the night, and then dogs and men would have to go up in the morning to bring the flock down into the valleys. Generally there is far less s
now in Wales than in the more northerly mountain districts, but a run of severe winters caused the dogs much toil and a good deal of danger. On several occasions, up and down the district, dogs and even men were lost in the snow, Sometinies sheep were completely buried under snowdrifts. Only a dog could then find them; and often only a man with a spade could rescue them. Sometimes the snow covered both high and low pastures. So long as it remained soft, the sheep could scrape it away with their feet and feed on the grass below. But when the surface was hardened by frost following thaw, this was impossible, and then hay had to be taken out to them. This was a job for Pugh or his man with a cart and the old mare, Mab. But the dogs, being super-dogs, were expected to report on the condition of the snow. If it was hard, they would come home to scratch and whine at Pugh's feet.

  Sometimes when Sirius was out in the hills alone in the winter dawn, examining the condition of the snow and looking for sheep in distress, the desolation of the scene would strike him with a shivering dread of existence. The universal carpet of snow, the mist of drifting flakes, the miserable dark sheep, pawing for food, the frozen breath on his own jaws, combined to make him feel that after all this was what the world was really like; that the warm fireside and friendly talk at Garth were just a rare accident, or perhaps merely a dream. "The whole world is just a dreary accident, with a few nice accidents mixed up in the mass." He had still to learn that there was something far worse than bitter weather with the near prospect of food and comfort, far worse even than his bitter loneliness at Caer Blai; and that the most horrible things in the world were all man-made. It was perhaps well that he did not yet realize the depth of man's folly and heartlessness, for if he had done so he might have been turned against the dominant species for ever. As it was, he attributed all evil to accident or "fate," and in fate's very indifference he sometimes found a certain exhilaration, Plodding home through the snow one day (so he told me long afterwards) he had a kind of inner vision of all living things, led by man, crusading gallantly against indifferent or hostile fate, doomed in the end to absolute defeat, but learning to exult in the battle, and snatching much delight before the end. And he saw himself as a rather lonely outpost in this great war, in which victory was impossible, and the only recompense was the sheer joy of the struggle. But by the very next day, so he said, his mood had changed from self-dramatization to an amused acceptance of his littleness and impotence.