A Gentleman From France/Chapter 5
About the first of October the actress concluded her rehearsals in Paris and went back to the château for a week. There had been delays in booking her American engagements, and also in getting passage across. All the westernbound steamers were crowded with fleeing Americans, eager to get home before it was too late.
Once back at the château, there was great commotion. There were countless new dresses and costumes for Madame, and a score of trunks were packed. Pierre did not even know what it all meant when he heard Marie telling Louis that Madame was going to take that Satan of a dog with her to America.
"Last year," wailed the tearful Marie, "it was the hateful Pomeranian, and this year it is this little imp. I know he will be the death of me before we get back. He is worse than the other."
Marie wept copiously, and Louis, being a gallant Frenchman, embraced her and Pierre was forgotten.
There was no use of objecting if Madame had made up her mind, so to America the Airedale went, as the most priceless and altogether adorable thing in her possession at the time.
She might love other dogs later on, but now Pierre was enough.
He slept in her stateroom during the voyage, and was waited upon by the disgusted Marie and the other maids, as though he had been the only child of the great lady.
Every one on shipboard petted him, and admired his War Cross, for they soon understood that this was the shortest way to the graces of Madame.
Up and down the country in a luxurious private car the little soldier toured, written up by newspaper reporters and lauded by theatre managers, until he came to the college town of Meadowdale. Here he took matters into his own hands and thereby changed the current of his entire future life.
Pierre was not happy travelling in Madame's private car! Not as happy as he had been with old Jean or with the Colonel. He was fondled and played with by his mistress to his heart's content, and admired by all who visited the car, but that was not enough for him. There was something that should have been in his life which he missed.
He would sit for hours on the leather-covered seat, looking wistfully out of the car window at the wide world through which he was passing so rapidly. He was watching for other dogs, and longing for the freedom of the outer world, that the poorest cur enjoyed more than he.
When he saw other dogs playing boisterously and even indulging in that wonder of wonders, a dog-fight, he would stand with his fore-paws on the window ledge, and bark frantically. The week of strenuous life as a War Dog had spoiled him for the pampered life. If he could only be out in this great free world of dog-fights, what would he not give? His world was bounded by the four walls and the ceiling of the car, but theirs was circumscribed only by the sky, and the four points of the compass.
He always made it a point to sleep with one eye open in the evening, so that he would be ready to receive his mistress when she came in from the theatre about midnight. She was always gay then, and would romp and tumble him about, in a manner that well suited the husky Airedale; but one short romp each evening was not enough for him. He must have life, and more of it, such life as he had had with the Colonel.
This parlor car was stifling him. He must get away.
Probably the move was not premeditated—just an impulse carried out on the spur of the moment; but one morning while Marie had him out on the rear platform of the car combing and brushing "the little Satan," as she called him, quick as a flash he slipped his collar and ran for freedom, just as many another dog, or even a boy, has done, out into the great, wide world.
Poor Marie was panic-stricken when she saw what had happened. Much as she hated Pierre, to have been the innocent cause of his loss filled her with terror.
With tears in her eyes, and with a pounding heart, she took the empty collar and the limp leash to the actress.
The great lady was furious. She stormed and wept, and would have discharged the luckless Marie on the spot, only that she was the best maid she had ever employed and she could not get another readily. She sent her servants chasing through the city, and the evening
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papers contained advertisements for the Airedale, but all to no purpose. He was lost to them as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed him.