THE TAMING OF TAIAUT

By PHILIP HEWITT-MYRING

MONSIEUR LEYDIGUE had been a great traveller in his youth. At a time when the springs of motor-cars were not so good as they are now, he had daily made trips on the autobuses to Valreas, to Pierrelatte, to Montelimar, even on occasion as far as Orange, lending a hand with the luggage, and leaping at intervals from the 'bus to deliver a parcel here, collect a sack of flour from there—or simply to tell some one that Cousin Jeanne's baby was doing well, or Sister Amelie sent her love. But ten years of jolting had, he informed us, laid waste his stomach. He retired ; and when we made his acquaintance was filling the role of the returned Odysseus of G— with dignity, and a thirst that suggested that his disabilities had not proved irreparable.

Since I really did understand his French, which was always trying to be Provencal, and my wife always looked as if she did, we were quite a godsend to Monsieur Leydigue. It is not often that a new face is seen in CI—, and most of the little town's regular inhabitants had heard his tales of escapes from crates of nougat, and of brakes that failed on the sides of hills, a good many times before. For our part, we cultivated him not so much for his stories as because he was at any rate the titular owner of the dog Taiaut—the sole living object in G— (as we liked to thilik and as far as we knew) that disliked us cordially.

It seemed to my wife and me after we had been a week in (3—that wherever we had walked in the town or the near-by country we had met this insufferable little animal. In appear- ance he was not displeasing. White and wire-haired, with a small brown patch here and there, he looked like a cross between an undersized beagle and a Sealyham—though an albino rabbit seemed also necessary in the family tree to explain his nose, which was pale pink and twitched incessantly. What first brought him to our notice, on the evening of our arrival, was his self-satisfied air as, with tail and head held high and consequence depicted in every inch of him, he trotted on his short legs down the middle of the main street, looking constantly from side to side to assure himself that men and beasts alike were behaving themselves in an orderly fashion throughout his domain. Then he caught sight of us. An uproar of barking ; a display of teeth ; a rush forward which, however, stopped short of the calves of our legs after I had made a few passes with my stick, and Taiaut's opinion of us had been made very plain. Nor, for all our blandishments on our subsequent meetings, could we induce him in the slightest degree to alter it.

Our failure irritated me mildly and pained my wife, who is the real dog-lover that I am not ; and Leydigue, of whom we sought counsel, could not help us.

"The truth is, he's frightened of you," he said as the dog, who for once was with his master, let loose a particularly ferocious growl. "For the rest, I have no influence over him. His Lordship does as he pleases. But he's a fine hunting- dog none the less : a born retriever. Watch."

He snatched the beret from his head and hurled it violently a few yards down the road. T 'aiaut trotted up to it ; looked at it a moment ; sneered, and returned empty-mouthed to glare at us.

" Whatever's wrong with the brute, I'll have him eating out of my hand—literally—if it takes all summer," said my wife to me as we walked away after a somewhat painful silence.

" give you a hundred francs the day you do," I said ; and for a week or more had no cause to fear for my money.

One evening, however, we were sitting on the crowded terrace of the Hotel S— drinking liqueurs in company with the Mayor of G--, a professional woman parachute- jumper (I'm not making this up) and the postman, when a finely-built young fellow walked in and sat down near us. I had just decided that he looked a little like Leydigue, and might conceivably be his son, when the hysterical miauling of a cat and the wild barking of a dog broke out beyond the paling that separates the terrace from the public road. The young man sprang to his feet.

" Taiaut ! Taiaut ! " he shouted.

Others, with laughter, took up the cry (for " Taiaut !" is—obviously—" Tally-ho ! "), and a moment later there trotted through the open gate a familiar white figure, which first lay quietly at the young man's feet, then saw us and filled the night with clamour while his master held him by the collar and his feet pawed frantically at the ground.

"I'm afraid he doesn't like us," I apologised to the Mayor —but my wife had already slipped away to return soon afterwards with a basin full of sugar and not less than half a pound of biscuits.

She tamed that dog that night with the assistance of the young man and to the tense interest of the entire company.

It took her two hours and two more sugar basins to do it ; but before she went happy to bed the disgusting tyke was simply slobbering over her, and had even deigned to accept the piece of biscuit that I reluctantly offered him. It was only slight consolation to me for the loss of a hundred francs to feel that at least we would now be able to walk about G— without being continually assaulted by a white ball of fury.

I was out early by myself next morning, and by the post- office I fell in with Monsieur Leydigue. Accompanying him at about 50 yards distance, but pretending not to do so, walked Taiaut, limping.

" Taiaut seems to have hurt his foot," I remarked to Leydigue.

"He's always doing it," said Leydigue philosophically. "He cut it by the Lez yesterday afternoon."

"He seemed all right at the Hotel last night," I said. "My wife's made friends with him, too."

" That is good," said Leydigue. "However," he added negligently, " Taiaut did not go to the café last night. My little one made a great fuss of his foot and kept him indoors while she tried to bind it up. There was no real need. A dog's foot —" "But dash it all, I saw him on the terrace. We all did."

"Perhaps that was my cousin Roussain's dog," said Leydigue. "It is easy to confuse them unless one is accustomed."

"But the dog at the Hotel was called Tafaut," I insisted. "That is the name of Roussain's dog," said Leydigue simply.

I knew the game was up, but stuck stubbornly to it. "Do you mean to say there are two dogs in G—, looking almost exactly alike and both called Taiaut ? "

Leydigue looked puzzled and a little hurt. So might an astronomer look if someone had challenged the precession of the equinoxes.

"Why not ? " he asked. But a shade of some misgiving seemed to be troubling him none the less.

"Is it not perhaps—confusing?" I ventured after a pause.

I was too late. Leydigue replaced in his pocket the empty pipe with which he had been scratching his head.

His face lightened. If that was in fact the thought that had been nagging at his subconscious brain, it had got no further.

"Nearly all the hunting-dogs in G— are called T 'aiaut," he announced cheerily. He paused again. "In fact they all are."

My wife was quite upset when I told her about it—upset enough, that is, to ensure that she kept the hundred francs.