Dog Tray

Dog Tray is Christabel LaMotte’s wolfhound, carried with her from Brittany to England. His fear during the journey and gradual recovery in the Bailey household make him more than a companion animal: his attachment to home, anger at being uprooted, and eventual trust give physical form to the costs of displacement that LaMotte herself struggles to speak about.

Arrival and Distress

Dog Tray arrives with LaMotte at her cousin’s house after a storm-tossed sea crossing. He hides beneath a small table in her bedroom, ears between his paws, and will not come out. LaMotte expects that, when the weather improves, he can run in the forest of Brocéliande, the place she calls his natural habitat; for the moment, however, the promised landscape cannot undo the terror of the voyage.

His distress continues indoors. He refuses food and lies flat with his nose toward LaMotte’s door, rising stiffly only twice a day to be let out. The narrator brings him titbits, but he rejects them. LaMotte explains that he is angry because she took him from a home where he had been happy and subjected him to fear and sickness aboard the boat. She even wonders whether he means to die to spite her, then turns the accusation inward, calling herself spiteful for having plagued him and others.

Attachment and Recovery

LaMotte believes Dog Tray is a one-person dog: when she has recently left him alone, he refused to eat until she returned. His attachment helps explain why the journey has unsettled him so profoundly, but it does not prevent a new bond from forming. The narrator persists in approaching him, and little by little he begins to explore the yard, stables, and orchard, makes himself at home in the hall, and leaves his post outside LaMotte’s door.

The change becomes unmistakable when he greets the narrator with a push of his great muzzle. He then eats two bowls of chicken soup that LaMotte has refused and wags his tail with pleasure. The recovery is practical and embodied: movement through the household replaces immobility at the bedroom threshold, and appetite and welcome replace fear and refusal.

LaMotte’s Guilt and the Uncertain Future

Dog Tray’s growing comfort brings LaMotte relief, but also sharpens her sense of responsibility. Seeing that he has accepted the narrator, she concludes that she was mistaken about his exclusive loyalty and says she should have left him where he was. In her comparison, even the magical glades of Brocéliande are worth less to him than a good run in Richmond Park. His response unsettles the romantic idea that a return to an enchanted homeland can automatically repair the harm of displacement: what he needs is not simply the right landscape, but safety and care.

LaMotte begins to say that Dog Tray might have given comfort, then breaks off. The narrator does not press her, recognizing her distress and reserve, and offers instead the possibility of walking with the dog in Brocéliande when the weather improves, or visiting the wilderness of the Pointe du Raz and the Baie des Trépassés. LaMotte answers that, when good weather comes, no one knows where they may be. Dog Tray’s story thus ends not with a settled return but with an uncertain future: the dog has begun to find comfort in a new household, while the human beings around him remain in motion.