Chapter 11
Of all the doorways on the north and south fronts of St. Giles the one to the Little Kirk was nearest the end of George IV Bridge. Confused by the vast size and imposing architecture of the old cathedral, these slum children, in search of the police office, went no farther, but ventured timidly into the open vestibule of Haddo's Hole. Any doubts they might have had about this being the right place were soon dispelled. Bobby heard them and darted out to investigate. And suddenly they were all inside, overwrought Ailie on the floor, clasping the little dog and crying hysterically.
“Bobby's no' deid! Bobby's no' deid! Oh, Maister Traill, ye wullna hae to gie 'im up to the police! Tammy's got the seven shullin's in 'is bonnet!”
And there was small Tammy, crutches dropped and pouring that offering of love and mercy out at the foot of an altar in old St. Giles. Such an astonishing pile of copper coins it was, that it looked to the landlord like the loot of some shopkeeper's change drawer.
“Eh, puir laddie, whaur did ye get it a' noo?” he asked, gravely.
Tammy was very self-possessed and proud. “The bairnies aroond the kirkyaird gie'd it to pay the police no' to mak' Bobby be deid.”
Mr. Traill flashed a glance at Glenormiston. It was a look at once of triumph and of humility over the Herculean deed of these disinherited children. But the Lord Provost was gazing at that crowd of pale bairns, products of the Old Town's ancient slums, and feeling, in his own person, the civic shame of it. And he was thinking, thinking, that he must hasten that other project nearest his heart, of knocking holes in solid rows of foul cliffs, in the Cowgate, on High Street, and around Greyfriars. It was an incredible thing that such a flower of affection should have bloomed so sweetly in such sunless cells. And it was a new gospel, at that time, that a dog or a horse or a bird might have its mission in this world of making people kinder and happier.
They were all down on the floor, in the space before the altar, unwashed, uncombed, unconscious of the dirty rags that scarce covered them; quite happy and self-forgetful in the charming friskings and friendly lollings of the well-fed, carefully groomed, beautiful little dog. Ailie, still so excited that she forgot to be shy, put Bobby through his pretty tricks. He rolled over and over, he jumped, he danced to Tammy's whistling of “Bonnie Dundee,” he walked on his hind legs and louped at a bonnet, he begged, he lifted his short shagged paw and shook hands. Then he sniffed at the heap of coins, looked up inquiringly at Mr. Traill, and, concluding that here was some property to be guarded, stood by the “siller” as stanchly as a soldier. It was just pure pleasure to watch him.
Very suddenly the Lord Provost changed his mind. A sacred kirk was the very best place of all to settle this little dog's affairs. The offering of these children could not be refused. It should lie there, below the altar, and be consecrated to some other blessed work; and he would do now and here what he had meant to do elsewhere and in a quite different way. He lifted Bobby to the pulpit so that all might see him, and he spoke so that all might understand.
“Are ye kennin' what it is to gie the freedom o' the toon to grand folk?”
“It's--it's when the bonny Queen comes an' ye gie her the keys to the burgh gates that are no' here ony mair.” Tammy, being in Heriot's, was a laddie of learning.
“Weel done, laddie. Lang syne there was a wa' aroond Edinburgh wi' gates in it.” Oh yes, all these bairnies knew that, and the fragment of it that was still to be seen outside and above the Grassmarket, with its sentry tower by the old west port. “Gin a fey king or ither grand veesitor cam', the Laird Provost an' the maigestrates gied 'im the keys so he could gang in an' oot at 'is pleesure. The wa's are a' doon noo, an' the gates no' here ony mair, but we hae the keys, an' we mak' a show o' gien' 'em to veesitors wha are vera grand or wise or gude, or juist usefu' by the ordinar'.”
“Maister Gladstane,” said Tammy.
“Ay, we honor the Queen's meenisters; an' Miss Nightingale, wha nursed the soldiers i' the war; an' Leddy Burdett-Coutts, wha gies a' her siller an' a' her heart to puir folk an' is aye kind to horses and dogs an' singin' birdies; an' we gie the keys to heroes o' the war wha are brave an' faithfu'. An' noo, there's a wee bit beastie. He's weel-behavin', an' isna makin' a blatterin' i' an auld kirkyaird. He aye minds what he's bidden to do. He's cheerfu' an' busy, keepin' the proolin' pussies an' vermin frae the sma' birdies i' the nests. He mak's friends o' ilka body, an' he's faithfu'. For a deid man he lo'ed he's gaun hungry; an' he hasna forgotten 'im or left 'im by 'is lane at nicht for mair years than some o' ye are auld. An' gin ye find 'im lyin' canny, an' ye tak' a keek into 'is bonny brown een, ye can see he's aye greetin'. An' so, ye didna ken why, but ye a' lo'ed the lanely wee--”
“Bobby!” It was an excited breath of a word from the wide-eyed bairns.
“Bobby! Havers! A bittie dog wadna ken what to do wi' keys.”
But Glenormiston was smiling, and these sharp witted slum bairns exchanged knowing glances. “Whaur's that sma'--?” He dived into this pocket and that, making a great pretense of searching, until he found a narrow band of new leather, with holes in one end and a stout buckle on the other, and riveted fast in the middle of it was a shining brass plate. Tammy read the inscription aloud:
GREYFRIARS BOBBY
FROM THE LORD PROVOST
1867 Licensed
The wonderful collar was passed from hand to hand in awed silence. The children stared and stared at this white-haired and bearded man, who “wasna grand ava,” but who talked to them as simply and kindly as a grandfaither. He went right on talking to them in his homely way to put them at their ease, telling them that nobody at all, not even the bonny Queen, could be more than kind and well-behaving and faithful to duty. Wee Bobby was all that, and so “Gin dizzens an' dizzens o' bairns war kennin' 'im, an' wad fetch seven shullin's i' their ha'pennies to a kirk, they could buy the richt for the braw doggie to be leevin', the care o' them a', i' the auld kirkyaird o' Greyfriars. An' he maun hae the collar so the police wull ken 'im an' no' ever tak' 'im up for a puir, gaen-aboot dog.”
The children quite understood the responsibility they assumed, and their eyes shone with pride at the feeling that, if more fortunate friends failed, this little creature must never be allowed to go hungry. And when he came to die--oh, in a very, very few years, for they must remember that “a doggie isna as lang-leevin' as folk”--they must not forget that Bobby would not be permitted to be buried in the kirkyard.
“We'll gie 'im a grand buryin',” said Tammy. “We'll find a green brae by a babblin' burn aneath a snawy hawthorn, whaur the throstle sings an' the blackbird whustles.” For the crippled laddie had never forgotten Mr. Traill's description of a proper picnic, and that must, indeed, be a wee dog's heaven.
“Ay, that wull do fair weel.” The collar had come back to him by this time, and the Lord Provost buckled it securely about Bobby's neck.
X.
The music of bagpipe, fife and drum brought them all out of Haddo's Hole into High Street. It was the hour of the morning drill, and the soldiers were marching out of the Castle. From the front of St. Giles, that jutted into the steep thoroughfare, they could look up to where the street widened to the esplanade on Castle Hill. Rank after rank of scarlet coats, swinging kilts and sporrans, and plumed bonnets appeared. The sun flashed back from rifle barrels and bayonets and from countless bright buttons.
A number of the older laddies ran up the climbing street. Mr. Traill called Bobby back and, with a last grip of Glenormiston's hand, set off across the bridge. To the landlord the world seemed a brave place to be living in, the fabric of earth and sky and human society to be woven of kindness. Having urgent business of buying supplies in the markets at Broughton and Lauriston, Mr. Traill put Bobby inside the kirkyard gate and hurried away to get into his everyday clothing. After dinner, or tea, he promised himself the pleasure of an hour at the lodge, to tell Mr. Brown the wonderful news, and to show him Bobby's braw collar.
When, finally, he was left alone, Bobby trotted around the kirk, to assure himself that Auld Jock's grave was unmolested. There he turned on his back, squirmed and rocked on the crocuses, and tugged at the unaccustomed collar. His inverted struggles, low growlings and furry contortions set the wrens to scolding and the redbreasts to making nervous inquiries. Much nestbuilding, tuneful courtship, and masculine blustering was going on, and there was little police duty for Bobby. After a time he sat up on the table-tomb, pensively. With Mr. Brown confined, to the lodge, and Mistress Jeanie in close attendance upon him there, the kirkyard was a lonely place for a sociable little dog; and a soft, spring day given over to brooding beside a beloved grave, was quite too heart-breaking a thing to contemplate. Just for cheerful occupation Bobby had another tussle with the collar. He pulled it so far under his thatch that no one could have guessed that he had a collar on at all, when he suddenly righted himself and scampered away to the gate.
The music grew louder and came nearer. The first of the route-marching that the Castle garrison practiced on occasional, bright spring mornings was always a delightful surprise to the small boys and dogs of Edinburgh. Usually the soldiers went down High Street and out to Portobello on the sea. But a regiment of tough and wiry Highlanders often took, by preference, the mounting road to the Pentlands to get a whiff of heather in their nostrils.
On they came, band playing, colors flying, feet moving in unison with a march, across the viaduct bridge into Greyfriars Place. Bobby was up on the wicket, his small, energetic body quivering with excitement from his muzzle to his tail. If Mr. Traill had been there he would surely have caught the infection, thrown care to this sweet April breeze for once, and taken the wee terrier for a run on the Pentland braes. The temptation was going by when a preoccupied lady, with a sheaf of Easter lilies on her sable arm, opened the wicket. Her ample Victorian skirts swept right over the little dog, and when he emerged there was the gate slightly ajar. Widening the aperture with nose and paws, Bobby was off, skirmishing at large on the rear and flanks of the troops, down the Burghmuir.
It may never have happened, in the years since Auld Jock died and the farmer of Cauldbrae gave up trying to keep him on the hills, that Bobby, had gone so far back on this once familiar road; and he may not have recognized it at first, for the highways around Edinburgh were everywhere much alike. This one alone began to climb again. Up, up it toiled, for two weary miles, to the hilltop toll-bar of Fairmilehead, and there the sounds and smells that made it different from other roads began.
Five miles out of the city the halt was called, and the soldiers flung themselves on the slope. Many experiences of route-marching had taught Bobby that there was an interval of rest before the return, so, with his nose to the ground, he started up the brae on a pilgrimage to old shrines, just as in his puppyhood days, at Auld Jock's heels, there was much shouting of men, barking of collies, and bleating of sheep all the way up. Once he had to leave the road until a driven flock had passed. Behind the sheep walked an old laborer in hodden-gray, woolen bonnet, and shepherd's two-fold plaid, with a lamb in the pouch of it. Bobby trembled at the apparition, sniffed at the hob-nailed boots, and then, with drooped head and tail, trotted on up the slope.
Men and dogs were all out on the billowy pastures, and the farm-house of Cauldbrae lay on the level terrace, seemingly deserted and steeped in memories. A few moments before, a tall lassie had come out to listen to the military music. A couple of hundred feet below, the coats of the soldiers looked to her like poppies scattered on the heather. At the top of the brae the wind was blowing a cold gale, so the maidie went up again, and around to a bit of tangled garden on the sheltered side of the house. The “wee lassie Elsie” was still a bairn in short skirts and braids, who lavished her soft heart, as yet, on briar bushes and daisies.
Bobby made a tour of the sheepfold, the cowyard and byre, and he lingered behind the byre, where Auld Jock had played with him on Sabbath afternoons. He inspected the dairy, and the poultry-house where hens were sitting on their nests. By and by he trotted around the house and came upon the lassie, busily clearing winter rubbish from her posie bed. A dog changes very little in appearance, but in eight and a half years a child grows into a different person altogether. Bobby barked politely to let this strange lassie know that he was there. In the next instant he knew her, for she whirled about and, in a kind of glad wonder, cried out:
“Oh, Bobby! hae ye come hame? Mither, here's ma ain wee Bobby!” For she had never given up the hope that this adored little pet would some day return to her.
“Havers, lassie, ye're aye seein' Bobby i' ilka Hielan' terrier, an' there's mony o' them aboot.”
The gude-wife looked from an attic window in the steep gable, and then hurried down. “Weel, noo, ye're richt, Elsie. He wad be comin' wi' the regiment frae the Castle. Bittie doggies an' laddies are fair daft aboot the soldiers. Ay, he's bonny, an' weel cared for, by the ordinar'. I wonder gin he's still leevin' i' the grand auld kirkyaird.”
Wary of her remembered endearments, Bobby kept a safe distance from the maidie, but he sat up and lolled his tongue, quite willing to pay her a friendly visit. From that she came to a wrong conclusion: “Sin' he cam' o' his ain accord he's like to bide.” Her eyes were blue stars.
“I wadna be coontin' on that, lassie. An' I wadna speck a door on 'im anither time. Grin he wanted to get oot he'd dig aneath a floor o' stane. Leuk at that, noo! The bonny wee is greetin' for Auld Jock.”
It was true, for, on entering the kitchen, Bobby went straight to the bench in the corner and lay down flat under it. Elsie sat beside him, just as she had done of old. Her eyes overflowed so in sympathy that the mother was quite distracted. This would not do at all.
“Lassie, are ye no' rememberin' Bobby was fair fond o' moor-hens' eggs fried wi' bits o' cheese? He wullna be gettin' thae things; an' it wad be maist michty, noo, gin ye couldna win the bittie dog awa' frae the reekie auld toon. Gang oot wi' 'im an' rin on the brae an' bid 'im find the nests aneath the whins.”
In a moment they were out on the heather, and it seemed, indeed, as if Bobby might be won. He frisked and barked at Elsie's heels, chased rabbits and flushed the grouse; and when he ran into a peat-darkened tarp, rimmed with moss, he had such a cold and splashy swim as quite to give a little dog a distaste for warm, soapy water in a claes tub. He shook and ran himself dry, and he raced the laughing child until they both dropped panting on the wind-rippled heath. Then he hunted on the ground under the gorse for those nests that had a dozen or more eggs in them. He took just one from each in his mouth, as Auld Jock had taught him to do. On the kitchen hearth he ate the savory meal with much satisfaction and polite waggings. But when the bugle sounded from below to form ranks, he pricked his drop ears and started for the door.
Before he knew what had happened he was inside the poultry-house. In another instant he was digging frantically in the soft earth under the door. When the lassie lay down across the crack he stopped digging, in consternation. His sense of smell told him what it was that shut out the strip of light; and a bairn's soft body is not a proper object of attack for a little dog, no matter how desperate the emergency. There was no time to be lost, for the drums began to beat the march. Having to get out very quickly, Bobby did a forbidden thing: swiftly and noisily he dashed around the dark place, and there arose such wild squawkings and rushings of wings as to bring the gude-wife out of the house in alarm.
“Lassie, I canna hae the bittie dog in wi the broodin' chuckies!”
She flung the door wide. Bobby shot through, and into Elsie's outstretched arms. She held to him desperately, while he twisted and struggled and strained away; and presently something shining worked into view, through the disordered thatch about his neck. The mother had come to the help of the child, and it was she who read the inscription on the brazen plate aloud.
“Preserve us a'! Lassie, he's been tak'n by the Laird Provost an' gien the name o' the auld kirkyaird. He's an ower grand doggie. Ma puir bairnie, dinna greet so sair!” For the little girl suddenly released the wee Highlander and sobbed on her mother's shoulder.
“He isna ma ain Bobby ony mair!” She “couldna thole” to watch him as he tumbled down the brae.
On the outward march, among the many dogs and laddies that had followed the soldiers, Bobby escaped notice. But most of these had gone adventuring in Swanston Dell, to return to the city by the gorge of Leith Water. Now, traveling three miles to the soldiers' one, scampering in wide circles over the fields, swimming burns, scrambling under hedges, chasing whaups into piping cries, barking and louping in pure exuberance of spirits, many eyes looked upon him admiringly, and discontented mouths turned upward at the corners. It is not the least of a little dog's missions in life to communicate his own irresponsible gaiety to men.
If the return had been over George IV Bridge Bobby would, no doubt, have dropped behind at Mr. Traill's or at the kirkyard. But on the Burghmuir the troops swung eastward until they rounded Arthur's Seat and met the cavalry drilling before the barracks at Piershill. Such pretty maneuvering of horse and foot took place below Holyrood Palace as quite to enrapture a terrier. When the infantry marched up the Canongate and High Street, the mounted men following and the bands playing at full blast, the ancient thoroughfare was quickly lined with cheering crowds, and faces looked down from ten tiers of windows on a beautiful spectacle. Bobby did not know when the bridge-approach was passed; and then, on Castle Hill, he was in an unknown region. There the street widened to the great square of the esplanade. The cavalry wheeled and dashed down High Street, but the infantry marched on and up, over the sounding drawbridge that spanned a dry moat of the Middle Ages, and through a deep-arched gateway of masonry.
The outer gate to the Castle was wider than the opening into many an Edinburgh wynd; but Bobby stopped, uncertain as to where this narrow roadway, that curved upward to the right, might lead. It was not a dark fissure in a cliff of houses, but was bounded on the outer side by a loopholed wall, and on the inner by a rocky ledge of ascending levels. Wherever the shelf was of sufficient breadth a battery of cannon was mounted, and such a flood of light fell from above and flashed on polished steel and brass as to make the little dog blink in bewilderment. And he whirled like a rotary sweeper in the dusty road and yelped when the time-gun, in the half-moon battery at the left of the gate and behind him, crashed and shook the massive rock.
He barked and barked, and dashed toward the insulting clamor. The dauntless little dog and his spirited protest were so out of proportion to the huge offense that the guard laughed, and other soldiers ran out of the guard houses that flanked the gate. They would have put the noisy terrier out at once, but Bobby was off, up the curving roadway into the Castle. The music had ceased, and the soldiers had disappeared over the rise. Through other dark arches of masonry he ran. On the crest were two ways to choose--the roadway on around and past the barracks, and a flight of steps cut steeply in the living rock of the ledge, and leading up to the King's Bastion. Bobby took the stairs at a few bounds.
On the summit there was nothing at all beside a tiny, ancient stone chapel with a Norman arched and sculptured doorway, and guarding it an enormous burst cannon. But these ruins were the crown jewels of the fortifications--their origins lost in legends--and so they were cared for with peculiar reverence. Sergeant Scott of the Royal Engineers himself, in fatigue-dress, was down on his knees before St. Margaret's oratory, pulling from a crevice in the foundations a knot of grass that was at its insidious work of time and change. As Bobby dashed up to the citadel, still barking, the man jumped to his feet. Then he slapped his thigh and laughed. Catching the animated little bundle of protest the sergeant set him up for inspection on the shattered breeching of Mons Meg.
“Losh! The sma' dog cam' by 'is ainsel'! He could no' resist the braw soldier laddies. 'He's a dog o' discreemination,' eh? Gin he bides a wee, noo, it wull tak' the conceit oot o' the innkeeper.” He turned to gather up his tools, for the first dinner bugle was blowing. Bobby knew by the gun that it was the dinner-hour, but he had been fed at the farm and was not hungry. He might as well see a bit more of life. He sat upon the cannon, not in the least impressed by the honor, and lolled his tongue.
In Edinburgh Castle there was nothing to alarm a little dog. A dozen or more large buildings, in three or four groups, and representing many periods of architecture, lay to the south and west on the lowest terraces, and about them were generous parked spaces. Into the largest of the buildings, a long, four-storied barracks, the soldiers had vanished. And now, at the blowing of a second bugle, half a hundred orderlies hurried down from a modern cook-house, near the summit, with cans of soup and meat and potatoes. The sergeant followed one of these into a room on the front of the barracks. In their serge fatigue-tunics the sixteen men about the long table looked as different from the gay soldiers of the march as though so many scarlet and gold and bonneted butterflies had turned back into sad-colored grubs.
“Private McLean,” he called to his batman who, for one-and-six a week, cared for his belongings, “tak' chairge o' the dog, wull ye, an' fetch 'im to the non-com mess when ye come to put ma kit i' gude order.”
Before he could answer the bombardment of questions about Bobby the door was opened again. The men dropped their knives and forks and stood at attention. The officer of the day was making the rounds of the forty or fifty such rooms in the barracks to inquire of the soldiers if their dinner was satisfactory. He recognized at once the attractive little Skye that had taken the eyes of the men on the march, and asked about him. Sergeant Scott explained that Bobby had no owner. He was living, by permission, in Greyfriars kirkyard, guarding the grave of a long-dead, humble master, and was fed by the landlord of the dining-rooms near the gate. If the little dog took a fancy to garrison life, and the regiment to him, he thought Mr. Traill, who had the best claim upon him, might consent to his transfer to the Castle. After orders, at sunset, he would take Bobby down to the restaurant himself.