Short Stories Old and New - Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and
mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts; and
his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the
life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this
preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good
deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had
been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened,
felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of
poetry than he had ever written. His eyes glistening with tears, he
gazed reverentially at the venerable man, and said within himself that
never was there an aspect so worthy of a prophet and a sage as that
mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with the glory of white hair
diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in
the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with
hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of Ernest.
Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world.
At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,
the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with
benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms
aloft, and shouted,--
"Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone
Face!"
Then all the people looked, and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said
was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what
he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, still
hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by
appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.
VII. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS (1858)[*]
[* From "Rab and his Friends and Other Dogs and Men."]
BY DR. JOHN BROWN (1810-1882)
[_Setting_. Dr. Brown was once driving with a friend through a crowded
section of Edinburgh when he stopped in the middle of a sentence,
seeming to be surprised at something behind the carriage. "Is it some
one you know?" the friend asked. "No," was the reply, "it's a dog I
_don't_ know." Needless to say that "Rab and his Friends" is an
Edinburgh story. The time is about 1824-1830. In the Scotch dialect
"weel a weel" means "all right"; "till" means "to"; "I'se" means "I
shall"; "he's" means "he shall"; "ower clean to beil" means "too clean
to suppurate"; "fremyt" means "strange"; "a' the lave" means "all the
rest"; "in the treviss wi' the mear" means "in the stall with the mare."
_Plot_. From Aesop's Fables to Kipling's Jungle Books literature is full
of animal stories. But there is no dog story better told than this and
none that appeals more to our deeper sympathies. It is more of a
character sketch than a short story, the incidents and characters being
bound together by a common relation to Rab. From his leisurely first
appearance in the story, "a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of
the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets," to the unanswerable
last question--"His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the
peace, and be civil?"--we follow Rab's pathetic career with the growing
conviction that "his like was na atween this and Thornhill," however
distant Thornhill may have been. Character sketches are apt to be
uninteresting because there is usually too little action and too much
description. The adjectives tend to smother the verbs. "They have," said
Hawthorne of his "Twice-Told Tales," "the pale tint of flowers that
blossomed in too retired a shade,--the coolness of a meditative habit,
which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every
sketch." But no such charge can be laid at the door of "Rab and his
Friends." The very dumbness of Rab, his mute yearning to help, his brave
and loyal ministries in the hospital, doubly affecting because wordless
and impotent, lend an appeal to this sketch that few sketches of men and
women can be said to have.
_Characters_. In a later sketch called "Our Dogs" Dr. Brown tells how
Rab became the property of James and Ailie. He had been terrifying
everybody at Macbie Hill and his owner ordered him to be hanged. As Rab
was getting the better of the contest, his owner commanded that he be
shot. But Ailie, who happened to be near, noticed that he had a big
splinter in his foreleg. "She gave him water," says Dr. Brown, "and by
her woman's wit got his lame paw under a door, so that he couldn't
suddenly get at her; then with a quick firm hand she plucked out the
splinter, and put in an ample meal. She went in some time after, taking
no notice of him, and he came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her
lap." From that moment they became friends. A little later James was in
a lonely part of the woods when a robber sprang at him and demanded his
money. "Weel a weel, let me get it," said James, and stepping back he
whispered to Rab, "Speak till him, my man." Rab had the robber down in
an instant.
In "Rab and his Friends" the great mastiff shows just the qualities that
we should expect from this account of his earlier career. But his
sympathy and affection for Ailie, shown so tenderly in the hospital
scenes, find an added pathos in the thought that he was serving his
first and best friend, one who had healed his hurt as he would have
healed hers if he could.]
Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms
intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.
When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
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 downwards and inwards, 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.
[* Esil, "vinegar" (_Hamlet_, V, I, 299).]
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 observed 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, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull,
and has the Shakesperian 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, my 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 o' an income
we're thinking."
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.
[* It is not easy giving this look by one word; it was expressive of her
being so much of her life alone.]
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 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 slank 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 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 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.
[* A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of singular
pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs, said, "Oh, Sir,
life's full o' sairiousness to him--he just never can get enuff o'
fechtin'."]
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.
[* Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous as a
boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without "the stern delight" a man of
strength and courage feels in their exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of
Dunearn, whose rare gifts and graces as a physician, a divine, a
scholar, and a gentleman, live only in the memory of those few who knew
and survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that when he
was in the pulpit, and saw a _buirdly_ man come along the passage, he
would instinctively draw himself up, measure his imaginary antagonist,
and forecast how he would deal with him, his hands meanwhile condensing
into fists, and tending to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if
he boxed as he preached--what "The Fancy" would call "an ugly
customer."]
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 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 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_ 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
happed 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 weather-worn 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, "Our 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_.