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WHEN the time-gun boomed from Edinburgh Castle, Bobby gave a
startled yelp. He was only a little country dog—the very youngest and
smallest and shaggiest of Skye terriers—bred on a heathery slope of the
Pentland hills, where the loudest sound was the bark of a collie or the
tinkle of a sheep-bell. That morning he had come to the weekly market with
Auld Jock, a farm laborer, and the Grassmarket of the Scottish capital lay
in the narrow valley at the southern base of Castle Crag. Two hundred feet
above it the time-gun was mounted in the half-moon battery on an
overhanging, crescent-shaped ledge of rock. In any part of the city the
report of the one-o’clock gun was sufficiently alarming, but in the
Grassmarket it was an earth-rending explosion directly overhead. It needed
to be heard but once there to be registered on even a little dog’s brain.
Bobby had heard it many times and he never failed to yelp a sharp protest at
the outrage to his ears; but, as the gunshot was always followed by a
certain happy event, it started in his active little mind a train of
pleasant associations.
In Bobby’s day of youth, and that was in 1858, when Queen
Victoria was a happy wife and mother, with all her bairns about her knees in
Windsor or Balmoral, the Grassmarket of Edinburgh was still a bit of the
Middle Ages, as picturesquely decaying and Gothic as German Nuremberg.
Beside the classic com exchange, it had no modem buildings. North and south,
along its greatest length, the sunken quadrangle was faced by tall, old,
timber-fronted houses of stone, plastered like swallows* nests to the rocky
slopes behind them.
Across the eastern end, where the valley suddenly narrowed to
the ravine-like street of the Cowgate, the market was spanned by the lofty,
crowded arches of George IV. Bridge. This high-hung, viaduct thoroughfare,
that carried a double line of buildings within its parapets, leaped the
gorge, from the tall, old, Gothic rookeries on High Street ridge, just below
the Castle esplanade. It cleared the roofs of the tallest, oldest houses
that swarmed up the steep banks from the Cowgate, and ran on, by easy
descent, to the main gateway of Greyfriars kirk-yard at the lower top of the
southern rise.
Greyfriars, two kirks formed together, under one continuous
roof, a long, low, buttressed building without tower or spire. The new kirk
was of Queen Anne’s day, but the old kirk was built before ever the Pilgrims
set sail for America. It had been but one of several sacred buildings, set
in a monastery garden that sloped pleasantly to the open valley of the
Grassmarket, and looked up the Castle heights unhindered. In Bobby’s day
this garden had shrunk to a long, narrow, high-piled burying-ground, that
extended from the rear of the line of buildings that fronted on the market,
up the slope, across the hilltop, and to where the land began to fall away
again, down the Burghmuir. From the Grassmarket, kirk and kirkyard lay
hidden behind and above the crumbling grandeur of noble halls and mansions
that had fallen to the grimiest tenements of Edinburgh’s slums. From the end
of the bridge-approach there was a glimpse of massive walls, of pointed
windows, and of monumental tombs through a double-leafed gate of wrought
iron, that was alcoved and wedged in between the ancient guildhall of the
candle-makers and a row of prosperous little shops in Greyfriars Place.
A rock-rimmed quarry pit, in the very heart of Old Edinburgh,
the Grassmarket was a place of historic echoes. The yelp of a little dog
there would scarce seem worthy of record. More in harmony with its stirring
history was the report of the time-gun. At one o’clock every day the/e was a
puff of smoke high up in the blue or gray or squally sky, then a deafening
crash and a back-fire fusillade of echoes. The oldest frequenter of the
market never got used to it. On Wednesday, as the shot broke across the
babel of shrill bargaining, every man in the place jumped, and not one was
quicker of recovery than wee Bobby. Instantly ashamed, as an intelligent
little dog who knew the import of the gun should be, Bobby denied his alarm
in a tiny pink yawn of boredom. Then he went briskly about his urgent
business of finding Auld Jock.
The market was closed. In five minutes the great open space
was as empty of living men as Greyfriars kirkyard on a week-day. Drovers and
hostlers disappeared at once into the cheap and noisy entertainment of the
White Hart Inn that fronted the market and set its squalid back against
Castle Rock. Farmers rapidly deserted it for the clean country. Dwellers in
the tenements darted up wynds and blind closes, climbed twisting turnpike
stairs to windy roosts under the gables, or they scuttled through noble
doors into foul courts and hallways. Beggars and pickpockets swarmed under
the arches of the bridge, to swell the evil-smelling human river that flowed
at the dark and slimy bottom of the Cowgate.
A chill November wind tore at the creaking iron cross of the
Knights of St. John, on the highest gable of the Temple tenements, that
turned its decaying back on the kirkyard of the Greyfriars. Low clouds were
tangled and tom on the Castle battlements. A few horses stood about,
munching oats from feed-boxes. Flocks of sparrows fluttered down from
timbered galleries and rocky ledges to feast on scattered grain. Swallows
wheeled in wide, descending spirals frorft mud villages under the cornices
to catch flies. Rats scurried out of holes and gleaned in the deserted corn
exchange. And ’round and ’round the empty market-place raced the frantic
little terrier in search of Auld Jock.
Bobby knew, as well as any man, that it was the dinner-hour.
With the time-gun it was Auld Jock’s custom to go up to a snug little
restaurant that was patronized chiefly by the decent poor-—small
shopkeepers, clerks, tenant farmers, and medical students living in cheap
lodgings—in Greyfriars Place. There, in Ye Olde Greyfriars.
Dining-Rooms, owned by Mr. John Traill, and four doors beyond
the kirkyard gate, was a cozy little inglenook that Auld Jock and Bobby had
come to look upon as their own. At its back, above a recessed oaken settle
and a table, a tiny-paned window looked up and over a retaining wall into
the ancient place of the dead.
The view of the heaped-up and crowded mounds and thickets of
old slabs and through-stones, girt all about by time-stained monuments and
vaults, and shut in on the north and east by the backs of shops and lofty
slum tenements, could not be said to be cheerful. It suited Auld Jock,
however, for what mind he had was of a melancholy turn. From his place on
the floor, between his master’s hob-nailed boots, Bobby could not see the
kirkyard, but it would not, in any case, have depressed his spirits. He did
not know the face of death and, a merry little ruffian of a terrier, he was
ready for any adventure.
On the stone gate pillar was a notice in plain English that
no dogs were permitted in Greyfriars. As well as if he could read, Bobby
knew that the kirkyard was forbidden ground. He had learned that by bitter
experience. Once, when the little wicket gate that held the two tall leaves
ajar by day, chanced to be open, he had joyously chased a cat across the
graves and over the western wall onto the broad green lawn of Heriot’s
Hospital.
There the little dog’s escapade bred other mischief, for
Heriot’s Hospital was not a hospital at all, in the modem English sense of
being a refuge for the sick. Built and christened in a day when a Stuart
king reigned in Holyrood Palace, and French was spoken in the Scottish
court, Heriot’s was a splendid pile of a charity school, all towers and
battlements, and cheerful color, and countless beautiful windows. Endowed by
a beruffed and doubleted goldsmith, “Jinglin Geordie” Heriot, who had “nae
braw laddie o’ his ain,” it was devoted to the care and education of “puir
orphan an’ faderless boys.” There it had stood for more than two centuries,
in a spacious park, like the country-seat of a Lowland laird, but hemmed in
by sordid markets and swarming slums. The region round about furnished an
unfailing supply of “puir orphan an’ faderless boys” who were as
light-hearted and irresponsible as Bobby.
Hundreds of the Heriot laddies were out in the noon recess,
playing cricket and leap-frog, when Bobby chased that unlucky cat over the
kirkyard wall. He could go no farther himself, but the laddies took up the
pursuit, yelling like Highland clans of old in a foray across the border.
The unholy din disturbed the sacred peace of tht kirkyard.
Bobby dashed back, barking furiously, in pure exuberance of spirits. He
tumbled gaily over grassy hummocks, frisked saucily around terrifying old
mausoleums, wriggled under the most enticing of low-set table tombs and
sprawled, exhausted, but still happy and noisy, at Auld Jock’s feet.
It was a scandalous thing to happen in any kirkyard! The
angry caretaker was instantly out of his little stone lodge by the gate and
taking Auld Jock sharply to task for Bobby’s misbehavior. The pious old
shepherd, shocked him* self and publicly disgraced, stood, bonnet in hand,
humbly apologetic. Seeing that his master was getting the worst of it, Bobby
rushed into the fray, an animated little muff of pluck and fury, and nipped
the caretaker’s shins. There was a howl of pain, and a “maist michty” word
that made the ancient tombs stand aghast. Master and dog were hustled
outside the gate and into a rabble of jeering slum gamins.
What a to-do about a miserable cat! To Bobby there was no
logic at all in the denouement to this swift, exciting drama. But he
understood Auld Jock’s shame and displeasure perfectly. Good-tempered as he
was gay and clever, the little dog took his punishment meekly, and he
remembered it. Thereafter, he passed the kirkyard gate decorously. If he saw
a cat that needed harrying he merely licked his little red chops—the outward
sign of a desperate self control. And, a true sport, he bore no malice
toward the caretaker.
During that first summer of his life Bobby learned many
things. He learned that he might chase rabbits, squirrels and moor-fowl, and
seagulls and whaups that came up to feed in plowed fields. Rats and mice
around byre and dairy were legitimate prey; but he learned that he must not
annoy sheep and sheep-dogs, nor cattle, horses and chickens. And he
discovered that, unless he hung close to Auld Jock’s heels, his freedom was
in danger from a wee lassie who adored him. He was no lady’s lap-dog. From
the bairnie’s soft cosseting he aye fled to Auld Jock and the rough
hospitality of the sheepfold. Being exact opposites in temperaments, but
alike in tastes, Bobby and Auld Jock were inseparable. In the quiet comer of
Mr. Traill’s crowded dining-room they spent the one idle hour \y of the week
together, happily. Bobby had the leavings of a herring or haddie, for a
rough little v Skye will eat anything from smoked fish to moor-fowl eggs,
and he had the tidbit of a farthing bone to worry at his leisure. Auld Jock
smoked his cutty pipe, gazed at the fire or into the kirk yard, and
meditated on nothing in particular.
In some strange way that no dog could under* stand, Bobby had
been separated from Auld Jock that November morning. The tenant of Cauldbrae
farm had driven the cart in, himself, and that was unusual. Immediately he
had driven out again, leaving Auld Jock behind, and that was quite outside
Bobby’s brief experience of life. Beguiled to the lofty and coveted driver’s
seat where, with lolling tongue, he could view this interesting world
between the horse’s ears, Bobby had been spirited out of the city and
carried all the way down and up to the hilltop toll-bar of Fairmilehead. It
could not occur to his loyal little heart that this treachery was planned
nor, stanch little democrat that he was, that the farmer was really his
owner, and that he could not follow a humbler master of his own choosing. He
might have been carried to the distant farm, and shut safely in the byre
with the cows for the night, but for an incautious remark of the farmer.
With the first scent of the native heather the horse quickened his pace,
and, at sight of the purple slopes of the Pentlands looming homeward, a fond
thought at the back of the man’s mind very naturally took shape in speech.
"Eh, Bobby; the wee lassie wull be at the tap o’ the brae to
race ye hame.”
Bobby pricked his drop ears. Within a narrow limit, and
concerning familiar things, the understanding of human speech by these
intelligent little terriers is very truly remarkable. At mention of the wee
lassie he looked behind for his rough old friend and unfailing refuge. Auld
Jock's absence discovered, Bobby promptly dropped from the seat of honor and
from the cart tail, sniffed the smoke of Edinboro’ town and faced right
about. To the farmer’s peremptory call he returned the spicy repartee of a
cheerful bark. It was as much as to say: “Dinna fash yersel’! I ken what I’m
aboot.” After an hour’s hard run back over the dipping and rising country
road and a long quarter-circuit of the city, Bobby found the high-walled,
winding way into the west end of the Grassmarket. To a human being afoot
there was a shorter cut, but the little dog could only retrace the familiar
route of the farm carts. It was a notable feat for a small creature whose
tufted legs were not more than six inches in length, whose thatch of long
hair almost swept the roadway and caught at every burr and bramble, and who
was still so young that his nose could not be said to be educated.
In the market-place he ran here and there through the crowd,
hopefully investigating narrow closes that were mere rifts in precipices of
buildings; nosing outside stairs, doorways, stables, bridge arches, standing
carts, and even hob-nailed boots. He yelped at the crash of the gun, but it
was another matter altogether that set his little heart to palpitating with
alarm. It was the dinner-hour, and where was Auld Jock?
Ah! A happy thought: his master had gone to dinner!
A human friend would have resented the idea of such base
desertion and sulked. But in a little dog’s heart of trust there is no room
for suspicion. The thought simply lent wings to Bobby’s tired feet. As the
market-place emptied he chased at the heels of laggards, up the
crescent-shaped rise of Candlemakers Row, and straight on to the familiar
dining-rooms. Through the forest of table and chair and human legs he made
his way to the back, to find a soldier from the Castle, in smart red coat
and polished boots, lounging in Auld Jock’s inglenook.
Bobby stood stock still for a shocked instant. Then he howled
dismally and bolted for the door. Mr. John Traill, the smooth-shaven,
hatchetfaced proprietor, standing midway in shirtsleeves an & white apron,
caught the flying terrier between his legs and gave him a friendly clap on
the side.
“Did you come by your ainsel’ with a farthing in your
silky-purse ear to buy a bone, Bobby? Whaur’s Auld Jock?”
A fear may be crowded back into the mind and stoutly denied
so long as it is not named. At the good landlord’s very natural question:
“Whaur’s Auld Jock?” there was the shape of the little dog’s fear that he
had lost his master. With a whimpering cry he struggled free. Out of the
door he went, like a shot. He tumbled down the steep curve and doubled on
his tracks around the market-place.
At his onslaught, the sparrows rose like brown leaves on a
gust of wind, and drifted down again. A cold mist veiled the Castle heights.
From the stone crown of the ancient Cathedral of St. Giles, on High Street,
floated the melody of “The Bluebells of Scotland.” No day was too bleak for
bell-ringer McLeod to climb the shaking ladder In the windy tower and play
the music bells during the hour that Edinburgh dined. Bobby forgot to dine
that day, first in his distracted search, and then in his joy of finding his
master.
For, all at once, in the very strangest place, in the very
strangest way, Bobby came upon Auld 'Cock. A rat. scurrying: out from a foul
and narrow passage that gave to the rear of the Whits Hart Inn, pointed the
little dog to a nook hitherto undiscovered by his curious nose. Hidden away
between the noisy tavern and the grim, island crag was the old cock-fighting
pit of a ruder day. There, in a broken-down carrier’s cart, abandoned among
the nameless abominations of public-house refuse, Auld Jock lay huddled in
his greatcoat of hodden gray and his shepherd’s plaid. On a bundle of
clothing tied in a tartan kerchief for a pillow, he lay very still and
breathing heavily.
Bobby barked as if he would burst his lungs. He barked so
long, so loud, and so furiously, running ’round and ’round the cart and
under it and yelping at every turn, that a slatternly scullery maid opened a
door and angrily bade him “no’ to deave folk wi’ ’is blatterin’.” Auld Jock
she did not see at all in the murky pit or, if she saw him, thought him some
drunken foreign sailor from Leith harbor. When she went in, she slammed the
door and lighted the gas.
Whether from some instinct of protection of his helpless
master in that foul and hostile place, or because barking had proved to be
of no use, Bobby sat back on his haunches and considered this strange,
disquieting thing. It was not like Auld Jock to sleep in the daytime, or so
soundly, at any time, that barking would not awaken him. A clever and
resourceful dog, Bobby crouched back against the farthest wall, took a
running leap to the top of the low boots, dug his claws into the stout,
home-knitted stockings, and scrambled up over Auld Jock’s legs into the
cart. In an instant he poked his little black mop of a wet muzzle into his
master’s face and barked once, sharply, in his ear.
To Bobby’s delight Auld Jock sat up and blinked his eyes. The
old eyes were brighter, the grizzled face redder than was natural, but such
matters were quite outside of the little dog’s ken. It was a dazed moment
before the man remembered that Bobby should not be there. He frowned down at
the excited little creature, who was wagging satisfaction from his nose-tip
to the end of his crested tail, in a puzzled effort to remember why.
“Eh, Bobby!” His tone was one of vague reproof. “Nae doot
ye’re fair satisfied wi’ yer ainsel’.”
Bobby’s feathered tail drooped, but it still quivered, all
ready to wag again at the slightest encouragement. Auld Jock stared at him
stupidly, his dizzy head in his hands. A very tired, very draggled little
dog, Bobby dropped beside his master, panting, subdued by the reproach, but
happy. His soft eyes, veiled by the silvery fringe that fell from his high
forehead, were deep-brown pools of affection. Auld Jock forgot, by and by,
that Bobby should not be there, and felt only the comfort of his
companionship.
“Weel, Bobby,” he began again, uncertainly. And then, because
his Scotch peasant reticence had been quite broken down by Bobby’s shameless
devotion, so that he told the little dog many things that he cannily
concealed from human kind, he confided the strange weakness and dizziness in
the head that had overtaken him: “Auld Jock is juist fair silly the day,
bonny wee laddie.” '
Down came a shaking, hot old hand in a rough caress, and up a
gallant young tail to wave like a banner. All was right with the little
dog’s world again. But it was plain, even to Bobby, that something had gone
wrong with Auld Jock. It was the man who wore the air of a culprit. A Scotch
laborer does not lightly confess to feeling “fair silly,” nor sleep away the
busy hours of daylight. The old man was puzzled and humiliated by this
discreditable thing. A human friend would have understood his plight, led
the fevered man out of that bleak and fetid cul-de-sac, tucked him into a
warm bed, comforted him with a hot drink, and then gone swiftly for skilled
help. Bobby knew only that his master had unusual need of love.
Very, very early a dog learns that life is not as simple a
matter to his master as it is to himself. There are times when he reads
trouble, that he cannot help or understand, in the man’s eye and voice. Then
he can only look his love and loyalty, wistfully, as if he felt his own
shortcoming in the matter of speech. And if the trouble is so great that the
master forgets to eat his dinner; forgets, also, the needs of his faithful
little friend, it is the dog’s dear privilege to bear neglect and hunger
without complaint. Therefore, when Auld Jock lay down again and sank, almost
at once, into sodden sleep, Bobby snuggled in the hollow of his master’s arm
and nuzzled his nose in his master’s neck. |
