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; whereon 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, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull,
and has the Shakespearean 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 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; sniffed
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 of course called him Hector.
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 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 o'
an income, we're thinkin'."
By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled
with straw, with 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 one more
subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's friend, 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 James, the Howland 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 should 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 it 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 condition," 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. 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 thick-set, 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 battles 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 could be no
doubt it must kill her, and soon. If 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 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. That 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 quietly, but without haste; dressed in
her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black
bombazeen 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
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_ 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, and Rab followed. We put her to bed. James took off his
heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capped and toe-capped, 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 weather-beaten 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, a 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 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" 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_, 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 a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this
bundle of clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child;
opening out her night-gown impatiently, and holding it close and
brooding over it and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom
his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful
and strange to see her wasted, dying look, keen and yet vague--her
immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. 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 on 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 without a stain.
"What is our life? It is even as 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 down-stairs 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.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab,
and, being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside.
It was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was _in
statu quo_; he heard the noise, too, and plainly knew it, but never
moved. I looked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for
the sun was not up--was Jess and the cart, a cloud of steam rising
from the old mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door,
and came up the stairs and met me. It was less than three hours since
he left, and he must have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full
nine miles off, yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He
had an armful of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He
nodded to me, and spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old
blankets having at their corners, "A.G., 1794," in large letters in
red worsted. These were the initials of Alison Graeme, and James may
have looked in at her from without--himself unseen but not unthought
of--when he was "wat, wat, and weary," and, after having walked many
a mile over the hills, may have seen her sitting, while "a' the lave
were sleeping," and by the firelight working her name on the blankets
for her ain James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and, taking his wife in his arms, laid her in
the blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face
uncovered; and then, lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and
with a resolved but utterly miserable face strode along the passage
and down-stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he
didn't need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in
the calm, frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped
him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and
did not need it. He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had
lifted her out ten days before--as tenderly as when he had her first
in his arms when she was only "A.G."--sorted her, leaving that
beautiful sealed face open to the heavens; and then, taking Jess by
the head, he moved away. He did not notice me, neither did Rab, who
presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College and
turned up Nicolson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the
streets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that
company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning
light touching the Pentlands, and making them like onlooking
ghosts; then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted
Woodhouselee"; and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,
and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take
the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and,
having put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.