Greyfriars Bobby Part 17

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 b.u.t.tons.

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 a.s.sure 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 redb.r.e.a.s.t.s to making nervous inquiries. Much nestbuilding, tuneful courtship, and masculine bl.u.s.tering 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 pa.s.sed.

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 la.s.sie 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 la.s.sie 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 la.s.sie, 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 la.s.sie 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, la.s.sie, 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 c.o.o.ntin' on that, la.s.sie. 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.

"La.s.sie, 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 la.s.sie 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.

"La.s.sie, 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'! La.s.sie, 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 pa.s.sed; 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 bra.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 gra.s.s 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 s.p.a.ces. 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 b.u.t.terflies 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.

"I wish you good luck, Sergeant." The officer whistled, and Bobby leaped upon him and off again, and indulged in many inconsequent friskings.

"Before you take him home fetch him over to the officers' mess at dinner. It is guest night, and he is sure to interest the gentlemen. A loyal little creature who has guarded his dead master's grave for more than eight years deserves to have a toast drunk to him by the officers of the Queen. But it's an extraordinary story, and it doesn't sound altogether probable. Jolly little beggar!" He patted Bobby cordially on the side, and went out.

The news of his advent and fragments of his story spread so quickly through the barracks that mess after mess swarmed down from the upper moors and out into the roadway to see Bobby. Private McLean stood in the door, smoking a cutty pipe, and grinning with pride in the merry little ruffian of a terrier, who met the friendly advances of the soldiers more than half-way. Bobby's guardian would have liked very well to have sat before the canteen in the sun and gossiped about his small charge.

However, in the sergeant's sleeping-quarters above the mess-room, he had the little dog all to himself, and Bobby had the liveliest interest in the boxes and pots, brushes and sponges, and in the processes of polishing, burnishing, and pipe-claying a soldier's boots and b.u.t.tons and belts. As he worked at his valeting, the man kept time with his foot to rude ballads that he sang in such a hissing Celtic that Bobby barked, scandalized by a dialect that had been music in the ears of his ancestors. At that Private McLean danced a Highland fling for him, and wee Bobby came near bursting with excitement. When the sergeant came up to make a magnificent toilet for tea and for the evening in town, the soldier expressed himself with enthusiasm.

"He iss a deffle of a dog, sir!"

He was thought to be a "deffle of a dog" in the mess, where the non-com officers had tea at small writing and card tables. They talked and laughed very fast and loud, tried Bobby out on all the pretty tricks he knew, and taught him to speak and to jump for a lump of sugar balanced on his nose. They did not fondle him, and this rough, masculine style of pampering and petting was very much to his liking. It was a proud thing, too, for a little dog, to walk out with the sergeant's shining boots and twirled walkingstick, and be introduced into one strange place after another all around the Castle.

From tea to tattoo was playtime for the garrison. Many smartly dressed soldiers, with pa.s.ses earned by good behavior, went out to find amus.e.m.e.nt in the city. Visitors, some of them tourists from America, made the rounds under the guidance of old soldiers. The sergeant followed such a group of sight-seers through a postern behind the armory and out onto the cliff. There he lounged under a fir-tree above St.

Margaret's Well and smoked a dandified cigar, while Bobby explored the promenade and sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with the strangers.

On the northern and southern sides the Castle wall rose from the very edge of sheer precipices. Except for loopholes there were no openings.

But on the west there was a gra.s.sy terrace without the wall, and below that the cliff fell away a little less steeply. The declivity was clothed spa.r.s.ely with hazel shrubs, thorns, whins and thistles; and now and then a stunted fir or rowan tree or a group of white-stemmed birks was stoutly rooted on a shelving ledge. Had any one, the visitors asked, ever escaped down this wild crag?

Yes, Queen Margaret's children, the guide answered. Their father dead, in battle, their saintly mother dead in the sanctuary of her tiny chapel, the enemy battering at the gate, soldiers had lowered the royal lady's body in a basket, and got the orphaned children down, in safety and away, in a fog, over Queen's Ferry to Dunfirmline in the Kingdom of Fife. It was true that a false step or a slip of the foot would have dashed them to pieces on the rocks below. A gentleman of the party scouted the legend. Only a fox or an Alpine chamois could make that perilous descent.

With his head c.o.c.ked alertly, Bobby had stood listening. Hearing this vague talk of going down, he may have thought these people meant to go, for he quietly dropped over the edge and went, head over heels, ten feet down, and landed in a clump of hazel. A lady screamed. Bobby righted himself and barked cheerful rea.s.surance. The sergeant sprang to his feet and ordered him to come back.

Now, the sergeant was pleasant company, to be sure; but he was not a person who had to be obeyed, so Bobby barked again, wagged his crested tail, and dropped lower. The people who shuddered on the brink could see that the little dog was going cautiously enough; and presently he looked doubtfully over a sheer fall of twenty feet, turned and scrambled back to the promenade. He was cried and exclaimed over by the hysterical ladies, and scolded for a bittie fule by the sergeant. To this Bobby returned ostentatious yawns of boredom and nonchalant lollings, for it seemed a small matter to be so fashed about. At that a gentleman remarked, testily, to hide his own agitation, that dogs really had very little sense. The sergeant ordered Bobby to precede him through the postern, and the little dog complied amiably.

All the afternoon bugles had been blowing. For each signal there was a different note, and at each uniformed men appeared and hurried to new points. Now, near sunset, there was the fanfare for officers' orders for the next day. The sergeant put Bobby into Queen Margaret's Chapel, bade him remain there, and went down to the Palace Yard. The chapel on the summit was a convenient place for picking the little dog up on his way to the officers' mess. Then he meant to have his own supper cozily at Mr. Traill's and to negotiate for Bobby.

A dozen people would have crowded this ancient oratory, but, small as it was, it was fitted with a chancel rail and a font for baptizing the babies born in the Castle. Through the window above the altar, where the sainted Queen was pictured in stained gla.s.s, the sunlight streamed and laid another jeweled image on the stone floor. Then the colors faded, until the holy place became an austere cell. The sun had dropped behind the western Highlands.

Bobby thought it quite time to go home. By day he often went far afield, seeking distraction, but at sunset he yearned for the grave in Greyfriars. The steps up which he had come lay in plain view from the doorway of the chapel. Bobby dropped down the stairs, and turned into the main roadway of the Castle. At the first arch that spanned it a red-coated guard paced on the other side of a closed gate. It would not be locked until tattoo, at nine thirty, but, without a pa.s.s, no one could go in or out. Bobby sprang on the bars and barked, as much as to say: "Come awa', man, I hae to get oot."