Books: Rab and His Friends
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John Brown, M. D. >> Rab and His Friends
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely
odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice,
the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright
and perilous eye, some wild words, some household cares, something for
James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt"
voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as if he were to
blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard. Many eager questions and
beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and on which she
seemed to set her all and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad,
but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered
about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her,
when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre,
chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great
knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doting over her
as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie wee dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed; that animula blandula, vagula, hospes, comesque,
was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for sixty years--
were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking, alone, through
the valley of that shadow into which one day we must all enter; and yet
she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and, as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in
bed, and, taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it
eagerly to her breast,--to the right side. We could see her eyes bright
with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of
clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her
night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and
murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth,
and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her
wasted dying look, keen and yet vague,--her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked backward
and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her
infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor! I declare she's thinkin' it's that
bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and
she's in the Kingdom forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the
pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined
brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a
breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they
were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she
whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final
darkness. After having for some time lain still, her eyes shut, she
said, "James!" He came close to her, and, lifting up her calm, clear,
beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but
shortly, looked for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her
husband again, as if she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes
and composed herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed
away so gently that, when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-
fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one
small spot of dimness was breathed out; it vanished away, and never
returned, leaving the blank clear darkness without a stain. "What is our
life? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then
vanisheth away."
Rab all this time had been fully awake and motionless: he came forward
beside us: Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was
soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her,
and returned to his place under the table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time, saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table,
and, putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled
them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latchets, and
muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that afore!"
I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said, roughly, and
pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leaped up, and
settled himself, his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye'll
wait for me," said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness,
thundering downstairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window; there
he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing like a
shadow.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid: so I sat down beside Rab,
and, being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It
was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was in statu
quo; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I
looked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning,--for the sun was
not up,--was Jess and the cart, a cloud of steam rising from the old
mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up the
stairs and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he
must have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full nine miles off,
yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of
blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me,
spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at their
corners "A. G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were the
initials of Alison Graeme, and James may have looked in at her from
without--himself unseen but not unthought of--when he was "wat, wat, and
weary," and, after having walked many a mile over the hills, may have
seen her sitting, while "a' the lave were sleepin'," and by the
firelight working her name on the blankets for her ain James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and, taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the
blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face
uncovered; and then, lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and,
with a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage,
and down-stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't
need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm
frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw
he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong and did not need it. He
laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten days
before,--as tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she was
only "A. G.,"--sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open to
the heavens; and then, taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did
not notice me; neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College and
turned up Nicolson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the
streets and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that
company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning
light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts,
then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted Woodhouselee;"
and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs, and
fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take the
key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having put
Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.
James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab watching the
proceedings from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole
would look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of
white. James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and
took to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort
of low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his
exhaustion, and his misery made him apt to take it. The grave was not
difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things
white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.
And what of Rab? I asked for him next week at the new carrier who got
the good-will of James's business and was now master of Jess and her
cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said, rather rudely, "What's YOUR
business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He,
getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, '"Deed,
sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he,
getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him
wi' a rackpin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi'
the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad
tak' naething, and keepit me fra feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur
gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to mak' awa wi'
the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and Thornhill,--but, 'deed,
sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick
and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the
peace and be civil?
He was buried in the braeface, near the burn, the children of the
village, his companions, who used to make very free with him and sit on
his ample stomach as he lay half asleep at the door in the sun, watching
the solemnity.
[Illustration of a grave]