Greyfriars Bobby Part 4

It was just before the report of the time-gun that two policemen cleared the stairs, shrouded Auld Jock in his own greatcoat and plaid, and carried him down to the court. There they laid him in a plain box of white deal that stood on the pavement, closed it, and went away down the wynd on a necessary errand. The Bible-reader sat on an empty beer keg to guard the box, and Bobby climbed on the top and stretched himself above his master. The court was a well, more than a hundred feet deep. What sky might have been visible above it was hidden by tier above tier of dingy, tattered washings. The stairway filled again, and throngs of outcasts of every sort went about their squalid businesses, with only a curious glance or so at the pathetic group.

Presently the policemen returned from the Cowgate with a motley a.s.sortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed f.a.got-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, and a furtive, gaol-bleached thief who feared a trap and tried to escape.

Tailed by scuffling gamins, the strange little procession moved quickly down the wynd and turned into the roaring Cowgate. The policemen went before to force a pa.s.sage through the press. The Bible-reader followed the box, and Bobby, head and tail down, trotted unnoticed, beneath it. The humble funeral train pa.s.sed under a bridge arch into the empty Gra.s.smarket, and went up Candlemakers Row to the kirkyard gate. Such as Auld Jock, now, by unnumbered thousands, were coming to lie among the grand and great, laird and leddy, poet and prophet, persecutor and martyr, in the piled-up, historic burying-ground of old Greyfriars.

By a gesture the caretaker directed the bearers to the right, past the church, and on down the crowded slope to the north, that was circled about by the backs of the tenements in the Gra.s.smarket and Candlemakers Row. The box was lowered at once, and the pall-bearers hastily departed to delayed dinners. The policemen had urgent duties elsewhere. Only the Bible reader remained to see the grave partly filled in, and to try to persuade Bobby to go away with him. But the little dog resisted with such piteous struggles that the man put him down again. The grave digger leaned on his spade for a bit of professional talk.

"Many a dog gangs daft an' greets like a human body when his maister dees. They're aye put oot, a time or twa, an' they gang to folic that ken them, an' syne they tak' to ithers. Dinna fash yersel' aboot 'im. He wullna greet lang."

Since Bobby would not go, there was nothing to do but leave him there; but it was with many a backward look and disturbing doubt that the good man turned away. The grave-digger finished his task cheerfully, shouldered his tools, and left the kirkyard. The early dark was coming on when the caretaker, in making his last rounds, found the little terrier flattened out on the new-made mound.

"Gang awa' oot!" he ordered. Bobby looked up pleadingly and trembled, but he made no motion to obey. James Brown was not an unfeeling man, and he was but doing his duty. From an impulse of pity for this bonny wee bit of loyalty and grief he picked Bobby up, carried him all the way to the gate and set him over the wicket on the pavement.

"Gang awa' hame, noo," he said, kindly. "A kirkya'rd isna a place for a bit dog to be leevin'."

Bobby lay where he had been dropped until the caretaker was out of sight. Then, finding the aperture under the gate too small for him to squeeze through, he tried, in his ancestral way, to enlarge it by digging. He scratched and scratched at the unyielding stone until his little claws were broken and his toes bleeding, before he stopped and lay down with his nose under the wicket.

Just before the closing hour a carriage stopped at the kirkyard gate. A black-robed lady, carrying flowers, hurried through the wicket. Bobby slipped in behind her and disappeared.

After nightfall, when the lamps were lighted on the bridge, when Mr.

Traill had come out to stand idly in his doorway, looking for some one to talk to, and James Brown had locked the kirkyard yard gate for the night and gone into his little stone lodge to supper, Bobby came out of hiding and stretched himself p.r.o.ne across Auld Jock's grave.

IV.

Fifteen minutes after the report of the time-gun on Monday, when the bells were playing their merriest and the dining-rooms were busiest, Mr. Traill felt such a tiny tug at his trouser-leg that it was repeated before he gave it attention. In the press of hungry guests Bobby had little more than room to rise in his pretty, begging att.i.tude. The landlord was so relieved to see him again, after five conscience stricken days, that he stooped to clap the little dog on the side and to greet him with jocose approval.

"Gude dog to fetch Auld Jock--"

With a faint and piteous cry that was heard by no one but Mr. Traill, Bobby toppled over on the floor. It was a limp little bundle that the landlord picked up from under foot and held on his arm a moment, while he looked around for the dog's master. Shocked at not seeing Auld Jock, by a kind of inspiration he carried the little dog to the inglenook and laid him down under the familiar settle. Bobby was little more than breathing, but he opened his silkily veiled brown eyes and licked the friendly hand that had done this refinement of kindness. It took Mr.

Traill more than a moment to realize the nature of the trouble. A dog with so thick a fleece of wool, under so crisply waving an outer coat as Bobby's, may perish for lack of food and show no outward sign of emaciation.

"The sonsie, wee--why, he's all but starved!"

Pale with pity, Mr. Traill s.n.a.t.c.hed a plate of broth from the hands of a gaping waiter laddie, set it under Bobby's nose, and watched him begin to lap the warm liquid eagerly. In the busy place the incident pa.s.sed unnoticed. With his usual, brisk decision Mr. Traill turned the backs of a couple of chairs over against the nearest table, to signify that the corner was reserved, and he went about his duties with unwonted silence.

As the crowd thinned he returned to the inglenook to find Bobby asleep, not curled up in a tousled ball, as such a little dog should be, but stretched on his side and breathing irregularly.

If Bobby was in such straits, how must it be with Auld Jock? This was the fifth day since the sick old man had fled into the storm. With new disquiet Mr. Traill remembered a matter that had annoyed him in the morning, and that he had been inclined to charge to mischievous Heriot boys. Low down on the outside of his freshly varnished entrance door were many scratches that Bobby could have made. He may have come for food on the Sabbath day when the place was closed.

After an hour Bobby woke long enough to eat a generous plate of that delectable and highly nourishing Scotch dish known as haggis. He fell asleep again in an easier att.i.tude that relieved the tension on the landlord's feelings. Confident that the devoted little dog would lead him straight to his master, Mr. Traill closed the door securely, that he might not escape unnoticed, and arranged his own worldly affairs so he could leave them to hirelings on the instant. In the idle time between dinner and supper he sat down by the fire, lighted his pipe, repented his unruly tongue, and waited. As the short day darkened to its close the sunset bugle was blown in the Castle. At the first note, Bobby crept from under the settle, a little unsteady on his legs as yet, wagged his tail for thanks, and trotted to the door.

Mr. Traill had no trouble at all in keeping the little dog in sight to the kirkyard gate, for in the dusk his coat shone silvery white. Indeed, by a backward look now and then, Bobby seemed to invite the man to follow, and waited at the gate, with some impatience, for him to come up. Help was needed there. By rising and tugging at Mr. Traill's clothing and then jumping on the wicket Bobby plainly begged to have it opened. He made no noise, neither barking nor whimpering, and that was very strange for a dog of the terrier breed; but each instant of delay he became more insistent, and even frantic, to have the gate unlatched.

Mr. Traill refused to believe what Bobby's behavior indicated, and reproved him in the broad Scotch to which the country dog was used.

"Nae, Bobby; be a gude dog. Gang doon to the Coogate noo, an' find Auld Jock."

Uttering no cry at all, Bobby gave the man such a woebegone look and dropped to the pavement, with his long muzzle as far under the wicket as he could thrust it, that the truth shot home to Mr. Traill's understanding. He opened the gate. Bobby slipped through and stood just inside a moment, and looking back as if he expected his human friend to follow. Then, very suddenly, as the door of the lodge opened and the caretaker came out, Bobby disappeared in the shadow of the church.

A big-boned, slow-moving man of the best country house-gardener type, serviceably dressed in corduroy, wool bonnet, and ribbed stockings, James Brown collided with the small and wiry landlord, to his own very great embarra.s.sment.

"Eh, Maister Traill, ye gied me a turn. It's no' canny to be proolin'

aboot the kirkyaird i' the gloamin'."

"Whaur did the bit dog go, man?" demanded the peremptory landlord.

"Dog? There's no' ony dog i' the kirkyaird. It isna permeetted. Gin it's a p.u.s.s.y ye're needin', noo--"

But Mr. Traill brushed this irrelevant pleasantry aside.

"Ay, there's a dog. I let him in my ainsel'."

The caretaker exploded with wrath: "Syne I'll hae the law on ye. Can ye no' read, man?"

"Tut, tut, Jeemes Brown. Don't stand there arguing. It's a gude and necessary regulation, but it's no' the law o' the land. I turned the dog in to settle a matter with my ain conscience, and John Knox would have done the same thing in the bonny face o' Queen Mary. What it is, is nae beesiness of yours. The dog was a sma' young terrier of the Highland breed, but with a drop to his ears and a crinkle in his frosty coat--no'

just an ordinar' dog. I know him weel. He came to my place to be fed, near dead of hunger, then led me here. If his master lies in this kirkyard, I'll tak' the bit dog awa' with me."

Mr. Traill's astonishing fluency always carried all walls of resistance before it with men of slower wit and speech. Only a superior man could brush time-honored rules aside so curtly and stand on his human rights so surely. James Brown pulled his bonnet off deferentially, scratched his shock head and shifted his pipe. Finally he admitted:

"Weel, there was a bit tyke i' the kirkyaird twa days syne. I put 'im oot, an' haena seen 'im aboot ony main" He offered, however, to show the new-made mound on which he had found the dog. Leading the way past the church, he went on down the terraced slope, prolonging the walk with conversation, for the guardianship of an old churchyard offers very little such lively company as John Traill's.

"I mind, noo, it was some puir body frae the Coogate, wi' no' ony mourners but the sma' terrier aneath the coffin. I let 'im pa.s.s, no'

to mak' a disturbance at a buryin'. The deal box was fetched up by the police, an' carried by sic a crew o' gaol-birds as wad mak' ye turn ower in yer ain G.o.d's hole. But he paid for his buryin' wi' his ain siller, an' noo lies as canny as the n.o.beelity. Nae boot here's the place, Maister Traill; an' ye can see for yer ainsel' there's no' any dog."

"Ay, that would be Auld Jock and Bobby would no' be leaving him,"

insisted the landlord, stubbornly. He stood looking down at the rough mound of frozen clods heaped in a little s.p.a.ce of trampled snow.

"Jeemes Brown," Mr. Trail said, at last, "the man wha lies here was a decent, pious auld country body, and I drove him to his meeserable death in the Cowgate."

"Man, ye dinna ken what ye're sayin'!" was the shocked response.

"Do I no'? I'm canny, by the ordinar', but my fule tongue will get me into trouble with the magistrates one of these days. It aye wags at both ends, and is no' tied in the middle."

Then, stanch Calvinist that he was, and never dreaming that he was indulging in the sinful pleasure of confession, Mr. Traill poured out the story of Auld Jock's plight and of his own shortcomings. It was a bitter, upbraiding thing that he, an uncommonly capable man, had meant so well by a humble old body, and done so ill. And he had failed again when he tried to undo the mischief. The very next morning he had gone down into the perilous Cowgate, and inquired in every place where it might be possible for such a timid old shepherd to be known. But there!

As well look for a burr thistle in a bin of oats, as look for a human atom in the Cowgate and the wynds "juist aff."

"Weel, noo, ye couldna hae dune aething wi' the auld body, ava, gin he wouldna gang to the infairmary." The caretaker was trying to console the self-accusing man.

"Could I no'? Ye dinna ken me as weel as ye micht." The disgusted landlord tumbled into broad Scotch. "Gie me to do it ance mair, an' I'd chairge Auld Jock wi' thievin' ma siller, wi' a wink o' the ee at the police to mak' them ken I was leein'; an' syne they'd hae hustled 'im aff, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, to a snug bed."

The energetic little man looked so entirely capable of any daring deed that he fired the caretaker into enthusiastic search for Bobby. It was not entirely dark, for the sky was studded with stars, snow lay in broad patches on the slope, and all about the lower end of the kirkyard supper candles burned at every rear window of the tall tenements.

The two men searched among the near-by slabs and table-tombs and scattered thorn bushes. They circled the monument to all the martyrs who had died heroically, in the Gra.s.smarket and elsewhere, for their faith.

They hunted in the deep shadows of the b.u.t.tresses along the side of the auld kirk and among the pillars of the octagonal portico to the new. At the rear of the long, low building, that was clumsily part.i.tioned across for two pulpits, stood the ornate tomb of "Bluidy" McKenzie. But Bobby had not committed himself to the mercy of the hanging judge, nor yet to the care of the doughty minister, who, from the pulpit of Greyfriars auld kirk, had flung the blood and tear stained Covenant in the teeth of persecution.

The search was continued past the modest Scott family burial plot and on to the west wall. There was a broad outlook over Heriot's Hospital grounds, a smooth and shining expanse of unsullied snow about the early Elizabethan pile of buildings. Returning, they skirted the lowest wall below the tenements, for in the circling line of courtyarded vaults, where the "n.o.beelity" of Scotland lay haughtily apart under timestained marbles, were many shadowy nooks in which so small a dog could stow himself away. Skulking cats were flushed there, and sent flying over aristocratic bones, but there was no trace of Bobby.

The second tier of windows of the tenements was level with the kirkyard wall, and several times Mr. Traill called up to a lighted cas.e.m.e.nt where a family sat at a scant supper.