crowd at the Tron-church. "A dog fight!" shouted Bob, and was off;
and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over
before we got up! And is not this boy nature! and human nature,
too? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we
see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it,
and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because
they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal
virtues of dog or man--courage, endurance, and skill--in intense
action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight,
and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A
boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy,
hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and
me fast enough; it is a natural, and a not wicked, interest that
all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.
Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's
eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he
could not see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a
rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a
crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate
woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue
and her hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a
crowd annular, compact and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its
eyes and its heads all bent downward and inward, to one common
focus.
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small
thoroughbred, white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large
shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with.
They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in
great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the
sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding,
however, soon had their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob
called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor
Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a
brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have
liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a
crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance; it was no use
kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer.
Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible
ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried
for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd.
"Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle aged man,
more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of
Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might.
This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring
shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered
a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
friend--who went down like a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of
snuff!" observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an
eye-glass in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd,
affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes
the buck, but with more urgency; whereupon were produced several
open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he
took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the
Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the
Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free.
The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.
But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he
grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in
Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off.
The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him; down Niddry
street he goes, bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob
and I, and our small men, panting behind.
There, under the single arch of the South bridge is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in
his pockets; he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland
bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes.
The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat.
To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand
still, hold himself up, and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious,
remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is
muzzled!_ The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his
master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his
huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather
of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could;
his lips curled up in rage--a sort of terrible grin; his teeth
gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth
tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and
surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like
of this?"
He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen
granite.
We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and
a cobbler gave him his knife; you know the kind of knife, worn away
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that
enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and
the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A
solemn pause; this was more than any of us had bargained for. I
turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the
mastiff had taken him by the small of the back, like a rat, and
broken it.
He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed and amazed; snuffed
him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned
round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John,
we'll bury him after tea." "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're
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, weather-beaten, 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 centre 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?
I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James.
"_You_ may; and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant
he's do that, doctor;" and in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you
could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a
lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw
granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body
thickset, like a little bull--a sort of compressed Hercules of a
dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had
a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker
than any night, a tooth or two--being all he had--gleaming out of
his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old
wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye
out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's
father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and
in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear,
which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that
bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be
said to be long, being as broad as long--the mobility, the
instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and
its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications
between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and swiftest.
Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought
his way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty
in his own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had
the gravity of all great fighters.
You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab
without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The
same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance,
the same deep inevitable eye, the same look--as of thunder asleep,
but ready--neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.
Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no
doubt it must kill her, and soon. It could be removed--it might
never return--it would give her speedy relief--she should have it
done. She curtsied, looked at James, and said, "When?" "To-morrow,"
said the kind surgeon--a man of few words. She and James and Rab
and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed
to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon,
the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first
landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper
fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the
paper were the words--"An operation to-day. J. B., _Clerk_"
Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places; in they crowded,
full of interest and talk. "What's the case? Which side is it?"
Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than
you or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their
proper work', and in them pity--as an _emotion_, ending in
itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while
pity as a _motive_, is quickened, and gains power and purpose.
It is well for poor human nature that it is so.
The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the
cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of
assistants is there. In comes Ailie; one look at her quiets and
abates the eager students. The beautiful old woman is too much for
them. They sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough
boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but
without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white
dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white
worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her was James with
Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and noble
head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and dangerous; forever
cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.
Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her
friend the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at
James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The
operation was at once begun; it was necessarily slow; and
chloroform--one of God's best gifts to his suffering children--was
then unknown. The surgeon did his work. The pale face showed its
pain, but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him;
he saw that something strange was going on--blood flowing from his
mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and
importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp impatient
yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man. But
James had him firm, and gave him a _glower_ (Scotch word--a
hard stare) from time to time, and an intimation of a possible
kick;--all the better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off
Ailie.
It is over; she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the
table, looks for James; then turning to the surgeon and the
students, she curtsies--and in a low, clear voice, begs their
pardon if she has behaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like
children; the surgeon wrapped her up carefully--and resting on James
and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following. We put her to bed.
James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and
toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister
John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be
her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as
pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender
as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man.
Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw
his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As
before, they spoke little.
Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he
could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he
was demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day,
generally to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild;
declined doing battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed
submitted to sundry indignities; and was always very ready to turn
and came faster back, and trotted up the stair with much lightness,
and went straight to that door.
Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weatherworn cart, to
Howgate, and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and
confusions, on the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural
freedom from the road and her cart.
For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first
intention"; for as James said, "Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to
beil." The students came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her
bed. She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. The
surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his own short, kind way,
pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James outside the circle--Rab
being now reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up his mind
that as yet nobody required worrying, but as you may suppose
_semper paratus_.
So far well; but four days after the operation my patient had a
sudden and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw
her soon after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she
was restless, and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost;
mischief had begun. On looking at the wound, a blush of red told
the secret; her pulse was rapid, her breathing anxious and quick,
she wasn't herself, as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness.
We tried what we could, James did everything, was everywhere; never
in the way, never out of it. Rab subsided under the table into a
dark place, and was motionless, all but his eye, which followed
every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in her mind, gently;
was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in her
questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore; no, never." For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon--the dear, gentle old
woman; then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave
way, and then came that terrible spectacle.
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"
she sang bits of old songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling
the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord,
with homely odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did
I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance,
the bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and
in a "fremyt" (querulous, trembling) voice, and he starting up,
surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, or had
been dreaming he heard. Many eager questions and beseechings which
James and I could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set
her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but
better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered
about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to
her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and
metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and
doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain
bonnie wee dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver
cord was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula, vagula,
hospes, comesque_ (dear fleeting life, a sojourner and companion)
was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for sixty
years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking,
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we
must all enter--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod
and staff were comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes
were shut. We put down the gas and sat watching her. Suddenly she
sat up in bed and taking a bedgown which was lying on it rolled up,
she held it eagerly to her breast--to the right side. We could see
her eyes bright with surpassing tenderness and joy, bending over
this bundle of clothes. She held it as a woman holds her suckling
child; opening out her nightgown impatiently, and holding it close,
and brooding over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as one
whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was
pitiful and strange to see her wasting dying look, keen and yet
vague--her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving away. And then she rocked back
and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it
her infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin'
it's that bairn." "What bairn?"
"The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and she's in the
Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the pain in
the breast telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined brain,
was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a
breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more
they were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but,
as she whispered, she was "clean silly"; it was the lightening
before the final darkness. After having for some time lain
still--her eyes shut, she said, "James!" He came close to her, and
lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long
look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could not
see him, then turned to her husband again, as if she would never
leave off looking, shut her eyes and composed herself. She lay for
some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that when we
thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the
mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness
was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the
blank clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is your
life? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and
then vanisheth away."
Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came
forward beside us; Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging
down; it was soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over
carefully, looked at her, and returned to his place under the
table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time--saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the
table, and putting his right, fore and middle fingers each into a
shoe, pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather
latchets, and muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that
afore."
I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly,
and pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leaped
up, and settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face.
"Maister John, ye'll wait for me," said the carrier, and
disappeared in the darkness, thundering downstairs in his heavy
shoes. I ran to a front window: there he was, already round the
house, and out at the gate fleeing like a shadow.