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By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled
with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat, with its
large white metal buttons, over her feet.

I never saw a more unforgettable face,--pale, serious, LONELY,
[Footnote: It is not easy giving this look by one word: it was
expressive of her being so much of her life alone.] delicate, sweet,
without being at all what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a
mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair
setting off her dark-gray eyes,--eyes such as one sees only twice or
thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of
it; her eyebrows [Footnote:
"Black brows, they say,
Become some women best; so that there be not
Too much hair there, BUT IN A SEMICIRCLE
OR A HALF-MOON MADE WITH A PEN."--A WINTER'S TALE.]
black and delicate, and her mouth firm, patient, and contented, which
few mouths ever are.

As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or one more
subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,
doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing, and prepared
to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all
his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he
could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a
gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie
his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen,
worldly face to hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something
wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything
that might turn up,--were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even
me. Ailie and he seemed great friends.

"As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor:
wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all
four, Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause
could be shown, willing also to be the reverse on the same terms. Ailie
sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck,
and, without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and
examined it carefully,--she and James watching me, and Rab eying all
three. What could I say? There it was, that had once been so soft, so
shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed
conditions,"--hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale
face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved
mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that
gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear
such a burden?

I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James. "YOU may; and
Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that, doctor;"
and in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen him. There
are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he
was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and
close, like a lion's; his body thick-set, like a little bull,--a sort of
compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight,
at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his
mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two--being all he had--gleaming
out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of
old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye
out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the
remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant
communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever
unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about
one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as
broad as long,--the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were
very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings,
the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the
oddest and swiftest.

Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and, having fought his
way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his
own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the gravity
[Footnote: A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of
singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs, said, "Oh,
sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him: he just never can get eneuch o'
fechtin'."] of all great fighters.

You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without
thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. [Footnote: Fuller
was in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous as a boxer; not
quarrelsome, but not without "the stern delight" a man of strength and
courage feels in their exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose
rare gifts and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a
gentleman live only in the memory of those few who knew and survive him,
liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say that when he was in the pulpit,
and saw a buirdly man come along the passage, he would instinctively
draw himself up, measure his imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he
would deal with him, his hands meanwhile condensing into fists and
tending to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if he boxed as he
preached,--what "The Fancy" would call an "ugly customer."] The same
large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same
deep inevitable eye, the same look,--as of thunder asleep, but ready,--
neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Wed 2nd Apr 2025, 18:02

Rab and His Friends by John Brown