[Illustration: "RAB, YE THIEF!"]
"Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at
a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up the
Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.
There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient,
black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head looking
about angrily for something.
"Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew
cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity,
and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart--his ears
down, and as much as he had of tail down too.
What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his
neck, and I eagerly told him the story which Bob and I always thought,
and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter, alone were worthy
to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to
say, "Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie"--whereupon the stump of a tail rose up,
the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two
friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to
Jess; and off went the three.
Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea)
in the back-green of his house in Melville street, No. 17, with
considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad,
and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.
* * * * *
Six years have passed--a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is
off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House
Hospital.
Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday; and we had much pleasant
intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his
huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would
plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail,
and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I
occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as
any Spartan.
One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital when I saw the
large gate open, and in walked Rab with that great and easy saunter of
his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like the
Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and
peace.
After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and in it a
woman, carefully wrapped up--the carrier leading the horse anxiously,
and looking back.
When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a curt and
grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John, this is the mistress; she's
got a trouble in her breest--some kind of an income we'er thinkin'."
By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled
with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat, with its
large white metal buttons, over her feet.
I never saw a more unforgettable face--pale, serious, _lonely_,
delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked
sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her
silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes--eyes such as one
sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of
the overcoming of it; her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth
firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.
As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or a more
subdued or settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,
doctor."
She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come
down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory,
been handing down the Queen of Sheba, at his palace gate, he could not
have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than
did James, the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie, his wife.
The contrast of his small, swarthy, weatherbeaten, keen, worldly face to
hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something wonderful. Rab looked
on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn
up--were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he
seemed great friends.
"As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor;
wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all
four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause
could be shown, willing also to be the reverse on the same terms. Ailie
sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck,
and, without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and
examined it carefully, she and James watching me, and Rab eying all
three. What could I say? There it was that had once been so soft, so
shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed
conditions"--hard as a stone, a center of horrid pain, making that pale
face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved
mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that
gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear
such a burden?