Read Online Sirius by Olaf Stapledon - Free Book Online Page B

occasion recently she had seen two dogs behaving in this odd way, but she had not seen Sirius doing it. She was surprised to find that it was a horrid shock to her. She hurried away, feeling unreasonably outraged and lonely.
    It was two or three years after the affair with Gwilim that she made her first conquest. Conwy Pritchard, the postmaster's son, was a much more responsive lover than the always friendly but never sentimental Gwilim. Conwy had a fight with another boy about her. This was very thrilling. She let herself be wholly monopolized by him. Sirius was once more neglected. When he himself happened to have an affair on, or was crazy about hunting, he did not mind at all. At other times he was often very lonely.
    Moreover, during this enthralling intimacy with Conwy, Plaxy's manner to Sirius sometimes showed an unwonted harshness. It was as though she had not merely forgotten about him, but resented his existence. Once he came upon the youthful lovers walking in a lane, hand in hand. When she saw him, Plaxy withdrew her hand and said in the way one speaks to a mere dog, "Go home, Sirius!" Conwy remarked, "Why does your father have to breed these fat-headed brutes?" Plaxy laughed nervously, and said in a rather squeaky voice, "Oh, but Sirius is a nice dog, really. Now off with you, Sirius. We don't want you now." While the dog stood still in the road, trying to analyse Plaxy's tone, to discover her precise emotional state, Conwy made a move as though to pick up a stone, and shouted, "Go home you tyke." The strong silky mane rose along Sirius's neck and shoulders, and he stalked ominously towards Conwy, with head down, ears back, and the ghost of a snarl. Plaxy cried out in a startled voice, "Sirius! Don't be crazy!" He looked at her coldly, then turned and walked off down the lane.
    That evening Plaxy tried hard to make friends with Sirius, but he would not respond. At last she said, and he could tell that she was nearly in tears, "I'm terribly sorry about this afternoon. But what could I do? I had to pretend you were just an ordinary dog, hadn't I?" His reply disconcerted her. "You wish I really was one, don't you!" A tear spilled out of her eye as she answered. "Oh, Sirius, I don't. But I'm growing up, and I must be like other girls." "Of course," he answered, "just as I must be like other dogs, even though I'm not really one of them, and there's no one of my sort in the whole world." He began to move off, but she suddenly seized him and hugged him, and said, "Oh, oh, you and I will be friends always. Even if each of us wants to be away living another life sometimes, we'll always, always, come back to one another afterwards, and tell about it." "If it could be like that," he said, "I should not be lonely even when you were away." She smiled and fondled him. "Plaxy," he said, "in spite of you being a girl and me a dog, you are nearest of all creatures to lonely me." Sniffing lightly at her neck, he added, "And the smell of you is more lovely really than the crazy-making scents of bitches." Then with his little whimpering laugh he said, "Nice human bitch!" Plaxy blushed, but she too laughed. She silently considered the phrase; then said, "If Conwy called me a bitch he'd mean something horrid, and I'd never speak to him again. When you say it, I suppose it's a compliment." "But you are a bitch," he protested. "You're a bitch of the species Homo sapiens , that Thomas is always talking about as though it was a beast in the Zoo."
    After the incident in the lane, Plaxy's affair with Conwy went all awry. She saw him in a new light. He was an attractive enough human animal, but he was nothing more. Apart from his looks and his confident irresistible love-making, there was nothing to him. The dog Sirius was far more human.
    For a while Plaxy and Sirius maintained a very close intimacy. She even persuaded him to walk to school in the morning and bring her back in the afternoon, "to keep Conwy from being a nuisance." Indeed the