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Page 81
He sketched the scene in Haddo's Hole, where the tenement bairns
poured out as pure a gift of love and mercy and self-sacrifice as
had ever been laid at the foot of a Scottish altar. He told of the
search for the lately ransomed and lost terrier, by the lavish use
of oil and candles; of Bobby's coming down Castle Rock in the fog,
battered and bruised for a month's careful tending by an old Heriot
laddie. His feet still showed the scars of that perilous descent.
He himself, remorseful, had gone with the Biblereader from the
Medical Mission in the Cowgate to the dormer-lighted closet in
College Wynd, where Auld Jock had died. Now he described the
classic fireplace of white freestone, with its boxed-in bed, where
the Pentland shepherd lay like some effigy on a bier, with the wee
guardian dog stretched on the flagged hearth below.
"What a subject for a monument!" The Grand Leddy looked across the
top of the slope at the sleeping Skye. "I suppose there is no
portrait of Bobby."
"Ay, your Leddyship; I have a drawing in the dining rooms, sketched
by Mr. Daniel Maclise. He was here a year or twa ago, just before
his death, doing some commission, and often had his tea in my bit
place. I told him Bobby's story, and he made the sketch for me as a
souvenir of his veesit."
"I am sure you prize it, Mr. Traill. Mr. Maclise was a talented
artist, but he was not especially an animal painter. There really
is no one since Landseer paints no more."
"I would advise you, Baroness, not to make that remark at an
Edinburgh dinner-table." Glenormiston was smiling. "The pride of
Auld Reekie just now is Mr. Gourlay Stelle, who was lately
commanded to Balmoral Castle to paint the Queen's dogs."
"The very person! I have seen his beautiful canvas--'Burns and the
Field Mouse.' Is he not a younger brother of Sir John Stelle, the
sculptor of the statue and character figures in the Scott
monument?" Her eyes sparkled as she added: "You have so much talent
of the right, sorts here that it would be wicked not to employ it
in the good cause."
What "the good cause" was came out presently, in the church, where
she startled even Glenormiston and Mr. Traill by saying quietly to
the minister and the church officers of Greyfriars auld kirk: "When
Bobby dies I want him laid in the grave with his master."
Every member of both congregations knew Bobby and was proud of his
fame, but no official notice had ever been taken of the little
dog's presence in the churchyard. The elders and deacons were, in
truth, surprised that such distinguished attention should be
directed to him now, and they were embarrassed by it. It was not
easy for any body of men in the United Kingdom to refuse anything
to Lady Burdett-Coutts, because she could always count upon having
the sympathy of the public. But this, they declared, could not be
considered. To propose to bury a dog in the historic churchyard
would scandalize the city. To this objection Glenormiston said,
seriously: "The feeling about Bobby is quite exceptional. I would
be willing to put the matter to the test of heading a petition."
At that the church officers threw up their hands. They preferred to
sound public sentiment themselves, and would consider it. But if
Bobby was permitted to be buried with his master there must be no
notice taken of it. Well, the Heriot laddies might line up along
the wall, and the tenement bairns look down from the windows. Would
that satisfy her ladyship?
"As far as it goes." The Grand Leddy was smiling, but a little
tremulous about the mouth.
That was a day when women had little to say in public, and she
meant to make a speech, and to ask to be allowed to do an
unheard-of thing.
"I want to put up a monument to the nameless man who inspired such
love, and to the little dog that was capable of giving it. Ah
gentlemen, do not refuse, now." She sketched her idea of the
classic fireplace bier, the dead shepherd of the Pentlands, and the
little prostrate terrier. "Immemorial man and his faithful dog. Our
society for the prevention of cruelty to animals is finding it so
hard to get people even to admit the sacredness of life in dumb
creatures, the brutalizing effects of abuse of them on human
beings, and the moral and practical worth to us of kindness. To
insist that a dog feels, that he loves devotedly and with less
calculation than men, that he grieves at a master's death and
remembers him long years, brings a smile of amusement. Ah yes! Here
in Scotland, too, where your own great Lord Erskine was a pioneer
of pity two generations ago, and with Sir Walter's dogs beloved of
the literary, and Doctor Brown's immortal 'Rab,' we find it uphill
work.
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