An English Girl in Japan by Ella M. Hart Bennett - HTML preview

CHAPTER X
 CHANG, MY CHOW

His first appearance--Adventures and mishaps--Companions in Hospital--Chang goes to Church--Facing the enemy.

Among all the reminiscences of my life in Japan I think those in which my Chinese chow dog played a part are perhaps the most vivid in my memory.

We had some good times together, Chang and I, and I fear the chief blame lies at his mistress’s door for not training him up in the way he should go. But who can teach a chow what he doesn’t want to learn? A cleverer person than I.

How well I remember Chang’s first appearance on the scene--a Sunday afternoon in Tokio. Enter Yami, very hot and agitated, holding a struggling yellow ball in his arms. Here was the much-longed-for chow puppy, sent me by a friend from Hong Kong. What a queer little chap he was, with his bright brown eyes and black tongue. Exceedingly dirty, too, I am sorry to have to confess, in spite of several baths on his arrival at Yokohama, to which I was told he much objected.

As Chang grew up he became the very finest chow dog seen out of China. What high-class specimens may be reserved for the special consumption of the yellow-jacketed and peacock-befeathered Chinese mandarin I know not, but in the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’ he decidedly held his own.

THREE FRIENDS.

Which reminds me--and I have it on the best authority, that of His Excellency Mr. Wong, late Chinese Minister in Tokio, since beheaded--that chow dogs are not eaten in China.

I had two little Japanese chins at that time--Yum-Yum and Dodo--which ran Chang very close in my affections. What pretty little things they were! Yum-Yum, no bigger than a fair-sized kitten, but almost human in intelligence and powers of affection, with her pretty little bird-like ways. I fancy even Chang’s stony heart now and then felt a pang of jealousy when he saw her sitting on my shoulder, nibbling a bit of lettuce, or chin-chinning to an admiring audience on the dining-room table for a grape or wee bit of apple.

Then the fat, sturdy Dodo too, with his long, black-and-white, silky coat and inquiring mind. I can see him now, gazing, with head on one side, like a pert cock-robin, at that funny, immovable little policeman outside the gates. I sometimes almost wondered myself if that small wooden figure were really alive, or only a dummy in uniform and sword, for surely it would have made a cat laugh to see Dodo’s never-ending astonishment and curiosity.

One constant source of excitement in Chang’s life at Tokio were the black crows. What games he used to play with them, feigning sleep, until those wary thieves would venture to make a raid on a half-finished bone; then up he would jump, and a mad chase would follow. But those wily old birds somehow always got the best of it, and would sit, cawing away triumphantly, in the twisted pine-tree just out of his reach.

But Chang was a great source of anxiety to me sometimes in those days, to say nothing of expense. Only the other evening, looking over some old papers, I came across the following bill, for which he is responsible:

BILL FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT OF THE CHOW DOG.

D. Equals about 17s. 6d.

THE GARDEN OF THE LITTLE TEA-HOUSE.

Ah! had it not been for the kind care and skill of those clever little Japs, he would not now be basking in luxury by the fire.

One day I found him lying, to all appearance, dead under the pink camellia-bush in the garden of that little tea-house far away from Tokio in the interior where we were staying. What could be the matter?

‘Poison, evidently,’ suggested one would-be comforter. Had he not barked at that melancholy-looking individual, who had apparently come to this far-off, secluded spot, in search of quiet and repose? No wonder, then, a foreigner’s dog--and such a dog--should be quietly, but surely, condemned!

I was in despair. What was to be done?

‘Consult a city magistrate?’ There was no city, and certainly no magistrate.

‘The village doctor’--brilliant suggestion from our faithful interpreter, Idaka. A rickshaw was summoned, and with many injunctions and--let me confess--a few tears, the poor, unconscious treasure was sent off in Yami’s watchful charge.

Three hours’ waiting, whilst a long line of patient and sick little Japanese went up for consultation to the kind old ‘isha-san’ (doctor), who lived in the little wooden house at the end of the narrow street, with the big tiger-lily before the door. There he sat upon his mat on the floor, clad in his blue kimono, with spectacles and pipe, waiting to receive his patients, with a little brass hibatchi burning away beside him.

Chang’s pulse and tongue having been both examined, Yami was given a small cardboard box containing six minute pills.

‘One every two hours until the patient is better.’ By mistake the pills all falling into his bread-and-milk, were swallowed in one dose, but fortunately no fatal result ensued.

The next day we returned to Tokio. How were we to dispose of the poor suffering one during the four hours’ rickshaw drive? Finally Chang was rolled up in a rug at my feet and all went well for the first twelve miles or so, when our rickshaw coolie in the shafts took it into his head to bolt down a steep hill. Result, a smash--a confused heap of mistress and dog on the ground, a broken-kneed coolie, to say nothing of the telescoping of the other rickshaws in the rear, which, not being able to stop in their downward course, were literally jammed together, the shafts of one going straight through the back of the one in front. Stiff and shaken as I was, I have seldom laughed more than at the sight the unfortunate occupants presented in their original prison. However, after some difficulty, at last we arrived home, and the next day Chang was sent off to that most excellent Japanese institution, the Komobar, where, after a month’s residence and the previously mentioned bill, he returned home convalescent, not, however, in his former unblemished condition. Having had inflammation of both lungs, it was thought necessary to blister his sides, and the absence of hair was replaced by a blue linen wadded coat, tied on with tape, and with two holes for the front-legs.

THE KIND OLD ‘ISHA-SAN’.

Poor Chang, how he hated being the laughing-stock of those odious curs in the neighbourhood. But we tried our best to console him by making him a coat of yellow iron-cloth, which we likened to the late Li Hung Chang’s renowned yellow jacket.

Chang’s little friends, the Japanese spaniels, were also his companions in hospital. Strange to say, about this time Dodo caught small-pox, or what Dr. Hitchikito pronounced to be such, and was promptly bundled off to the hospital for a three-weeks’ residence in a large wicker cage, with strict quarantine, whence he returned somewhat thinner, but just as pompous as ever.

Little Yum-Yum’s illness was of a different nature. During our absence from Tokio she pined to such an extent that her little brain could no longer stand the strain, and she developed brain-fever. We received one morning a frantic telegram from the cook to say ‘Yum-Yum seriously ill; under treatment.’ On our return, we found the patient better, looking very interesting, lying in a small brown basket before the kitchen fire. She had sufficient strength to give a weak little bark of joy, and feebly lick our hands with her tiny red tongue. We were told she had literally been packed in ice to reduce the fever, until her silken coat stood out stiff and straight like frozen snow.

They are clever men those Japanese veterinaries. Where else in the world would an animal have been treated in that scientific and up-to-date fashion?

I think there were moments when Chang must have been possessed of an evil spirit, otherwise what can have put it into his disobedient head to follow me to church one Sunday morning, in spite of strict orders to remain at home?

After he had been three times removed from the aisle by the irate churchwarden, I was at last obliged to escort him myself to what I thought was a safe distance, and, leaving him trotting sadly away up the little path towards the house, I returned to church and my devotions quite happy in my mind.

All went well until the sermon. The curate was just going up into the pulpit when I saw him suddenly start back, very nearly falling over as he did so, and then beckon to one of the choir-boys. An animated discussion followed, then the boy, looking somewhat pale, mounted the steps, dived down into the pulpit, and, to my horror, I saw Chang being dragged out, much against his will, looking extremely cross, but otherwise perfectly regardless of the commotion he was causing.

When he had been safely marched out through the vestry, and the door firmly closed, the service was resumed, but I noticed that the sermon was somewhat dogmatic that morning. A thousand pardons!

THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE FOREST .

On investigation, I discovered that Chang, as soon as my back was turned, had followed me quietly at some little distance, and, entering the church unperceived by the vestry door, decided to take his morning nap on the pulpit mat until it should be time to escort me home.

The next morning I received a polite note from the curate asking me kindly to abstain in future from bringing my dog to church, as, although he admired him immensely, he thought a dog a somewhat disturbing element on such occasions. In future, on Sunday mornings, before our departure to church, the offender was firmly secured to the leg of the kitchen table, and we had no more startling apparitions to distract us.

I think life would have been quite ideal in our summer quarters at Karuizawa had it not been for that odious black chow that lived in the other little house in the forest, just across the stream down below.

He was not to be compared to Chang in beauty, and, I must confess, in a tooth-to-tooth fight, Chang invariably got the worst of it. After a daily encounter on neutral grounds, affairs reached a crisis when, one day, in a fit of bravado, my hero ventured into the enemy’s camp, and a terrific and sanguinary battle followed. In one last, desperate struggle, they fell together into the gold-fish pond, and were only rescued from a watery grave by the gallant exertions of the black chow’s master, who dragged them out dripping, half dead, but still locked in a deadly embrace, only to be loosened by the repeated application of buckets of water and finally pepper on their respective noses.

The appearance of my friend for the next few days resembled that of a victim to mumps, combined with a black and swollen eye and a somewhat mangy condition of his naturally glossy coat.

Even that, alas! did not cure Chang’s pugilistic tendencies. How often has he returned home a sadder, though I fear not a wiser, dog! On one occasion with but three sound legs; on another, with a hole the size of a bullet-wound in his throat from a mastiff’s fang. But enough of these painful reflections.

CHANG’S FIRST APPEARANCE.