We were to make our bow to the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale in the evening, and we were in a state of republican excitement at 22, Breadalbane Terrace.
Francesca had surprised us by refusing to be presented at this semi-royal Scottish court. "Not I," she said. "The Marchioness represents the Queen; we may discover, when we arrive, that she has raised the standards of admission, and requires us to 'back out' of the throne-room. I don't propose to do that without London training. Besides, I detest crowds, and I never go to my own President's receptions; and I have a headache, anyway, and I don't feel like coping with the Reverend Ronald to-night!" (Lady Baird was to take us under her wing, and her nephew was to escort us, Sir Robert being in Inveraray.)
Sally, my dear, I said, as Francesca left the room with a bottle of smelling-salts somewhat ostentatiously in evidence, "methinks the damsel doth protest too much. In other words, she devotes a good deal of time and discussion to a gentleman whom she heartily dislikes. As she is under your care, I will direct your attention to the following points:--
"Ronald Macdonald is a Scotsman; Francesca disapproves of international alliances. He is a Presbyterian; she is a Swedenborgian.
" "His father was a famous old school doctor; Francesca is a homoeopathist. He is serious; Francesca is gay.
"I think, under all the circumstances, their acquaintance will bear watching. Two persons so utterly dissimilar, and, so far as superficial observation goes, so entirely unsuited to each other, are quite likely to drift into marriage unless diverted by watchful philanthropists.
Nonsense! returned Salemina brusquely. "You think because you are under the spell of the tender passion yourself that other people are in constant danger. Francesca detests him."
Who told you so?
She herself, triumphantly.
Salemina, I said pityingly, "I have always believed you a spinster from choice; don't lead me to think that you have never had any experience in these matters! The Reverend Ronald has also intimated to me as plainly as he dared that he cannot bear the sight of Francesca. What do I gather from this statement? The general conclusion that if it be true, it is curious that he looks at her incessantly."
Francesca would never live in Scotland, remarked Salemina feebly.
Not unless she were asked, of course, I replied.
He would never ask her.
Not unless he thought he had a chance of an affirmative answer.
Her father would never allow it.
Her father allows what she permits him to allow. You know that perfectly well.
What shall I do about it, then?
Consult me.
What shall _we_ do about it?
Let Nature have her own way.
I don't believe in Nature.
Don't be profane, Salemina, and don't be unromantic, which is worse; but if you insist, trust in Providence.
I would rather trust Francesca's hard heart.
The hardest hearts melt if sufficient heat be applied. Did I take you to Newhaven and read you 'Christie Johnstone' on the beach for naught? Don't you remember Charles Reade said that the Scotch are icebergs, with volcanoes underneath; thaw the Scotch ice, which is very cold, and you shall get to the Scotch fire, warmer than any sun of Italy or Spain. I think Mr. Macdonald is a volcano.
I wish he were extinct, said Salemina petulantly, "and I wish you wouldn't make me nervous."
If you had any faculty of premonition, you wouldn't have waited for me to make you nervous.
Some people are singularly omniscient.
Others are singularly deficient--And at this moment Susanna Crum came in to announce Miss Jean Dalziel, who had come to see sights with us.
It was our almost daily practice to walk through the Old Town, and we were now familiar with every street and close in that densely crowded quarter. Our quest for the sites of ancient landmarks never grew monotonous, and we were always reconstructing, in imagination, the Cowgate, the Canongate, the Lawnmarket, and the High Street, until we could see Auld Reekie as it was in bygone centuries. In those days of continual war with England, people crowded their dwellings as near the Castle as possible, so floor was piled upon floor and flat upon flat, families ensconcing themselves above other families, the tendency being ever skyward. Those who dwelt on top had no desire to spend their strength in carrying down the corkscrew stairs matter which would descend by the force of gravity if pitched from the window or door; so the wayfarer, especially after dusk, would be greeted with cries of "Get out o' the gait!" or "Gardy loo!" which was in the French "_Gardez l'eau_," and which would have been understood in any language, I fancy, after a little experience. The streets then were filled with the debris flung from a hundred upper windows, while certain ground-floor tenants, such as butchers and candlemakers, contributed their full share to the fragrant heaps. As for these too seldom used narrow turnpike stairs, imagine the dames of fashion tilting their vast hoops and silken show-petticoats up and down in them!
That swine roamed at will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed, since we have this amusing picture of three High Street belles and beauties in the "Traditions of Edinburgh:"--
So easy were the manners of the great, fabled to be so stiff and decorous, says the author, "that Lady Maxwell's daughter Jane, who afterward became the Duchess of Gordon, was seen riding a sow up the High Street, while her sister Eglantine (afterwards Lady Wallace of Craigie) thumped lustily behind with a stick."
No wonder, in view of all this, that King James VI., when about to bring home his "darrest spous" Anne of Denmark, wrote to the Provost, "For God's sake see a' things are richt at our hame-coming; a king with a new-married wife doesna come hame ilka day."
Had it not been for these royal home-comings and visits of distinguished foreigners, now and again aided by something still more salutary, an occasional outbreak of the plague, the easy-going authorities would never have issued any "cleansing edicts," and the still easier-going inhabitants would never have obeyed them. It was these dark, tortuous wynds and closes, nevertheless, that made up the Court End of Old Edinbro'; for some one writes in 1530, "Via vaccarum in qua habitant patricii et senatores urbis" (The nobility and chief senators of the city dwell in the Cowgate). And as for the Canongate, this Saxon _gaet_ or way of the Holyrood canons, it still sheltered in 1753 "two dukes, sixteen earls, two dowager countesses, seven lords, seven lords of session, thirteen baronets, four commanders of the forces in Scotland, and five eminent men,"--fine game indeed for Mally Lee!
"A' doun alang the Canongate Were beaux o' ilk degree; And mony ane turned round to look At bonny Mally Lee. And we're a' gaun east an' west, We're a' gaun agee, We're a' gaun east an' west Courtin' Mally Lee!
"Every corner bristles with memories. Here is the Stamp Office Close, from which the lovely Susanna, Countess of Eglinton, was wont to issue on Assembly nights; she, six feet in height, with a brilliantly fair complexion and a "face of the maist bewitching loveliness." Her seven daughters and stepdaughters were all conspicuously handsome, and it was deemed a goodly sight to watch the long procession of eight gilded sedan-chairs pass from the Stamp Office Close, bearing her and her stately brood to the Assembly Room, amid a crowd that was "hushed with respect and admiration to behold their lofty and graceful figures step from the chairs on the pavement."
Here itself is the site of those old Assemblies presided over at one time by the famous Miss Nicky Murray, a directress of society affairs, who seems to have been a feminine premonition of Count d'Orsay and our own McAllister. Rather dull they must have been, those old Scotch balls, where Goldsmith saw the ladies and gentlemen in two dismal groups divided by the length of the room.
"The Assembly Close received the fair-- Order and elegance presided there-- Each gay Right Honourable had her place, To walk a minuet with becoming grace. No racing to the dance with rival hurry, Such was thy sway, O famed Miss Nicky Murray!
"It was half past nine in the evening when Salemina and I drove to Holyrood, our humble cab-horse jogging faithfully behind Lady Baird's brougham, and it was the new experience of seeing Auld Reekie by lamplight that called up these gay visions of other days,--visions and days so thoroughly our mental property that we could not help resenting the fact that women were hanging washing from the Countess of Eglinton's former windows, and popping their unkempt heads out of the Duchess of Gordon's old doorway.
The Reverend Ronald is so kind! He enters so fully into our spirit of inquiry, and takes such pleasure in our enthusiasms! He even sprang lightly out of Lady Baird's carriage and called to our "lamiter" to halt while he showed us the site of the Black Turnpike, from whose windows Queen Mary saw the last of her kingdom's capital.
Here was the Black Turnpike, Miss Hamilton! he cried; "and from here Mary went to Loch Leven, where you Hamiltons and the Setons came gallantly to her help. Don't you remember the 'far ride to the Solway sands'?"
I looked with interest, though I was in such a state of delicious excitement that I could scarce keep my seat.
Only a few minutes more, Salemina, I sighed, "and we shall be in the palace courtyard; then a probable half-hour in crowded dressing-rooms, with another half-hour in line, and then, then we shall be making our best republican bow in the Gallery of the Kings! How I wish Mr. Beresford and Francesca were with us! What do you suppose was her real reason for staying away? Some petty disagreement with our young minister, I am sure. Do you think the dampness is taking the curl out of our hair? Do you suppose our gowns will be torn to ribbons before the Marchioness sees them? Do you believe we shall look as well as anybody? Privately, I think we must look better than anybody; but I always think that on my way to a party, never after I arrive."
Mrs. M'Collop had asserted that I was "bonnie eneuch for ony court," and I could not help wishing that "mine ain dear Somebody" might see me in my French frock embroidered with silver thistles, and my "shower bouquet" of Scottish bluebells tied loosely together. Salemina wore pinky-purple velvet; a real heather color it was, though the Lord High Commissioner would probably never note the fact.
When we had presented our cards of invitation at the palace doors, we joined the throng and patiently made our way up the splendid staircases, past powdered lackeys without number, and, divested of our wraps, joined another throng on our way to the throne-room, Salemina and I pressing those cards with our names "legibly written on them" close to our palpitating breasts.
At last the moment came when, Lady Baird having preceded me, I handed my bit of pasteboard to the usher; and hearing "Miss Hamilton" called in stentorian accents, I went forward in my turn, and executed a graceful and elegant but not too profound curtsy, carefully arranged to suit the semi-royal, semi-ecclesiastical occasion. I had not divulged the fact even to Salemina, but I had worn Mrs. M'Collop's carpet quite threadbare in front of the long mirror, and had curtsied to myself so many times in its crystal surface that I had developed a sort of fictitious reverence for my reflected image. I had only begun my well-practiced obeisance when Her Grace the Marchioness, to my mingled surprise and embarrassment, extended a gracious hand and murmured my name in a particularly kind voice. She is fond of Lady Baird, and perhaps chose this method of showing her friendship; or it may be that she noticed my silver thistles and Salemina's heather-colored velvet,--they certainly deserved special recognition; or it may be that I was too beautiful to pass over in silence,--in my state of exaltation I was quite equal to the belief.
The presentation over, we wandered through the spacious apartments, leaning from the open windows to hear the music of the band playing in the courtyard below, looking at the royal portraits, and chatting with groups of friends who appeared and reappeared in the throng. Finally Lady Baird sent for us to join her in a knot of personages more and less distinguished, who had dined at the palace, and who were standing behind the receiving party in a sort of sacred group. This indeed was a ground of vantage, and one could have stood there for hours, watching all sorts and conditions of men and women bowing before the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness, who, with her Cleopatra-like beauty and scarlet gown, looked like a gorgeous cardinal-flower.
Salemina and I watched the curtsying narrowly, with the view at first of improving our own obeisances for Buckingham Palace; but truth to say we got no added light, and plainly most of the people had not worn threadbare the carpets in front of their dressing-mirrors.
Suddenly we heard a familiar name announced, "Lord Colquhoun," a distinguished judge who had lately been raised to the peerage, and whom we often met at dinners; then "Miss Rowena Colquhoun;" and then, in the midst, we fancied, of an unusual stir at the entrance door--"Miss Francesca Van Buren Monroe." I involuntarily touched the Reverend Ronald's shoulder in my astonishment, while Salemina lifted her tortoiseshell lorgnette, and we gazed silently at our recreant charge.
After presentation, each person has fifteen or twenty feet of awful space to traverse in solitary and defenseless majesty; scanned meanwhile by the maids of honor (who, if they were truly honorable, would turn their eyes another way), ladies-in-waiting, the sacred group in the rear, and the Purse-Bearer himself. I had supposed that this functionary would keep the purse in his upper bureau drawer at home, when he was not paying bills, but it seems that when on processional duty he carries a bag of red velvet quite a yard long over his arm, where it looks not unlike a lady's opera-cloak. It would hold the sum total of the moneys disbursed, even if they were reduced to the standard of vulgar copper.
Under this appalling fire of inspection, some of the victims waddle, some hurry; some look up and down nervously, others glance over the shoulder as if dreading to be apprehended; some turn red, others pale, according to complexion and temperament; some swing their arms, others trip on their gowns; some twitch the buttons of a glove, or tweak a flower or a jewel. Francesca rose superior to all these weaknesses, and I doubt if the Gallery of the Kings ever served as a background for anything lovelier or more high-bred than that untitled slip of a girl from "the States." Her trailing gown of pearl-white satin fell in unbroken lustrous folds behind her. Her beautiful throat and shoulders rose in statuesque whiteness from the mist of chiffon that encircled them. Her dark hair showed a moonbeam parting that rested the eye, wearied by the contemplation of waves and frizzes fresh from the curling-tongs. Her mother's pearls hung in ropes from neck to waist, and the one spot of color about her was the single American Beauty rose she carried. There is a patriotic florist in Paris who grows these long-stemmed empresses of the rose-garden, and Mr. Beresford sends some to me every week. Francesca had taken the flower without permission, and I must say she was as worthy of it as it of her.
She curtsied deeply, with no exaggerated ceremony, but with a sort of innocent and childlike gravity, while the satin of her gown spread itself like a great blossom over the floor. Her head was bowed until the dark lashes swept her crimson cheeks; then she rose again from the heart of the shimmering lily, with the one splendid rose glowing against all her dazzling whiteness, and floated slowly across the dreaded space to the door of exit as if she were preceded by invisible heralds and followed by invisible train-bearers.
Who is she? we heard whispered here and there. "Look at the rose!" "Look at the pearls! Is she a princess or only an American?"
I glanced at the Reverend Ronald. I imagined he looked pale; at any rate, he was biting his under lip nervously and I believe he was in fancy laying his serious, Scottish, allopathic, Presbyterian heart at Francesca's gay, American, homoeopathic, Swedenborgian feet.
It is a pity Miss Monroe is such an ardent republican, he said, with unconcealed bitterness; "otherwise she ought to be a duchess. I never saw a head that better suited a coronet, nor, if you will pardon me, one that contained more caprices."
It is true she flatly refused to accompany us here, I allowed, "but perhaps she has some explanation more or less silly and serviceable; meantime, I defy you to tell me she isn't a beauty, and I implore you to say nothing about its being only skin-deep. Give me a beautiful exterior, say I, and I will spend my life in making the hidden things of mind and soul conform to it; but deliver me from all forlorn attempts to make my beauty of character speak through a large mouth, breathe through a fat nose, and look at my neighbor through crossed eyes!"
Mr. Macdonald agreed with me, with some few ministerial reservations. He always agrees with me, and why he is not tortured at the thought of my being the promised bride of another, but continues to squander his affections upon a quarrelsome and unappreciative girl, is more than I can comprehend.
Francesca, escorted by Lord Colquhoun, appeared presently in our group, but Salemina did not even attempt to scold her. One cannot scold an imperious young beauty in white satin and pearls, particularly if she is leaning nonchalantly on the arm of a peer of the realm.
It seems that shortly after our departure (we had dined with Lady Baird) Lord Colquhoun had sent a note to me, requiring an answer. Francesca had opened it, and found that he offered an extra card of invitation to one of us, and said that he and his sister would gladly serve as escort to Holyrood, if desired. She had had an hour or two of solitude by this time, and was well weary of it, while the last vestige of headache disappeared under the temptation of appearing at court with all the eclat of unexpectedness. She dispatched a note of acceptance to Lord Colquhoun, summoned Mrs. M'Collop, Susanna, and the maiden Boots to her assistance, spread the trays of her Saratoga trunks about our three bedrooms, grouped all our candles on her dressing-table, and borrowed any little elegance of toilette which we chanced to have left behind. Her own store of adornments is much greater than ours, but we possess certain articles for which she has a childlike admiration: my white satin slippers embroidered with seed pearls, Salemina's pearl-topped comb, Salemina's Valenciennes handkerchief and diamond belt-clasp, my pearl frog with ruby eyes. We identified our property on her impertinent young person, and the list of her borrowings so amused the Reverend Ronald that he forgot his injuries.
It is really an ordeal, that presentation, no matter how strong one's sense of humor may be, nor how well rooted one's democracy, chattered Francesca to a serried rank of officers who surrounded her to the total routing of the ministry. "It is especially trying if one has come unexpectedly and has no idea of what is to happen. I was agitated at the supreme moment, because, at the entrance of the throne-room, I had just shaken hands reverently with a splendid person who proved to be a footman. Of course I took him for the Commander of the Queen's Guards, or the Keeper of the Dungeon Keys, or the Most Noble Custodian of the Royal Moats, Drawbridges, and Portcullises. When he put out his hand I had no idea it was simply to waft me onward, and so naturally I shook it,--it's a mercy that I didn't kiss it! Then I curtsied to the Royal Usher, and overlooked the Lord High Commissioner altogether, having no eyes for any one but the beautiful scarlet Marchioness. I only hope they were too busy to notice my mistakes, otherwise I shall be banished from Court at the very moment of my presentation.--Do you still banish nowadays?" turning the battery of her eyes upon a particularly insignificant officer who was far too dazed to answer. "Did you see the child of ten who was next to me in line? She is Mrs. Macstronachlacher; at least that was the name on the card she carried, and she was thus announced. As they tell us the Purse-Bearer is most rigorous in arranging these functions and issuing the invitations, I presume she must be Mrs. Macstronachlacher; but if so, they marry very young in Scotland, and her skirts should really have been longer!"
It is our last day in "Scotia's darling seat," our last day in Breadalbane Terrace, our last day with Mrs. M'Collop; and though every one says that we shall love the life in the country, we are loath to leave Auld Reekie.
Salemina and I have spent two days in search of an abiding-place, and have visited eight well-recommended villages with that end in view; but she disliked four of them, and I couldn't endure the other four, though I considered some of those that fell under her disapproval as quite delightful in every respect.
We never take Francesca on these pilgrimages of disagreement, as three conflicting opinions on the same subject would make insupportable what is otherwise rather exhilarating. She starts from Edinburgh to-morrow for a brief visit to the Highlands with the Dalziels, and will join us when we have settled ourselves.
Mr. Beresford leaves Paris as soon after our decision as he is permitted, so Salemina and I have agreed to agree upon one ideal spot within thirty-six hours of our quitting Edinburgh, knowing privately that after a last battle royal we shall enthusiastically support the joint decision for the rest of our lives.
We have been bidding good-by to people and places and things, and wishing the sun would not shine and thus make our task the harder. We have looked our last on the old gray town from Calton Hill, of all places the best, perhaps, for a view; since, as Stevenson says, from Calton Hill you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle, and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. We have taken a farewell walk to the Dean Bridge, to gaze wistfully eastward and marvel for the hundredth time to find so beautiful a spot in the heart of a city. The soft flowing Water of Leith winding over pebbles between grassy banks and groups of splendid trees, the roof of the little temple to Hygeia rising picturesquely among green branches, the slopes of emerald velvet leading up to the gray stone of the houses,--where, in all the world of cities, can one find a view to equal it in peaceful loveliness? Francesca's "bridge-man," who, by the way, proved to be a distinguished young professor of medicine in the university, says that the beautiful cities of the world should be ranked thus,--Constantinople, Prague, Genoa, Edinburgh; but having seen only one of these, and that the last, I refuse to credit any sliding scale of comparison which leaves Edina at the foot.
It was nearing tea-time, an hour when we never fail to have visitors, and we were all in the drawing-room together. I was at the piano, singing Jacobite melodies for Salemina's delectation. When I came to the last verse of Lady Nairne's "Hundred Pipers," the spirited words had taken my fancy captive, and I am sure I could not have sung with more vigor and passion had my people been "out with the Chevalier."
"The Esk was swollen sae red an' sae deep, But shouther to shouther the brave lads keep; Twa thousand swam oure to fell English ground, An' danced themselves dry to the pibroch's sound. Dumfounder'd the English saw, they saw, Dumfounder'd they heard the blaw, the blaw, Dumfounder'd they a' ran awa', awa', Frae the hundred pipers an' a', an' a'!
"By the time I came to "Dumfounder'd the English saw" Francesca left her book and joined in the next four lines, and when we broke into the chorus Salemina rushed to the piano, and although she cannot sing, she lifted her voice both high and loud in the refrain, beating time the while with a dirk paper-knife.
Susanna ushered in Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe as the last "blaw" faded into silence, and Jean Dalziel came upstairs to say that they could seldom get a quiet moment for family prayers, because we were always at the piano, hurling incendiary sentiments into the air,--sentiments set to such stirring melodies that no one could resist them.
We are very sorry, Miss Dalziel, I said penitently. "We reserve an hour in the morning and another at bedtime for your uncle's prayers, but we had no idea you had them at afternoon tea, even in Scotland. I believe that you are chaffing, and came up only to swell the chorus. Come, let us all sing together from 'Dumfounder'd the English saw.'"
Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe gave such splendid body to the music, and Jean such warlike energy, that Salemina waved her paper-knife in a manner more than ever sanguinary, and Susanna hesitated outside the door for sheer delight, and had to be coaxed in with the tea-things. On the heels of the tea-things came the Dominie, another dear old friend of six weeks' standing; and while the doctor sang "Jock o' Hazledean" with such irresistible charm that we all longed to elope with somebody on the instant, Salemina dispensed buttered toast, marmalade sandwiches, and the fragrant cup. By this time we were thoroughly cosy, and Mr. Macdonald made himself and us very much at home by stirring the fire; whereupon Francesca embarrassed him by begging him not to touch it unless he could do it properly, which, she added, seemed quite unlikely, from the way in which he handled the poker.
What will Edinburgh do without you? he asked, turning towards us with flattering sadness in his tone. "Who will hear our Scotch stories, never suspecting their hoary old age? Who will ask us questions to which we somehow always know the answers? Who will make us study and reverence anew our own landmarks? Who will keep warm our national and local pride by judicious enthusiasm?"
I think the national and local pride may be counted on to exist without any artificial stimulants, dryly observed Francesca, whose spirit is not in the least quenched by approaching departure.
Perhaps, answered the Reverend Ronald; "but at any rate, you, Miss Monroe, will always be able to reflect that you have never been responsible even for its momentary inflation!"
Isn't it strange that she cannot get on better with that charming fellow? murmured Salemina, as she passed me the sugar for my second cup.
If your present symptoms of blindness continue, Salemina, I said, searching for a small lump so as to gain time, "I shall write you a plaintive ballad, buy you a dog, and stand you on a street corner! If you had ever permitted yourself to 'get on' with any man as Francesca is getting on with Mr. Macdonald, you would now be Mrs.--Somebody."
Do you know, doctor, asked the Dominie, "that Miss Hamilton shed real tears at Holyrood, the other night, when the band played 'Bonnie Charlie's now awa'?"
They were real, I confessed, "in the sense that they certainly were not crocodile tears; but I am somewhat at a loss to explain them from a sensible, American standpoint. Of course my Jacobitism is purely impersonal, though scarcely more so than yours, at this late day; at least it is merely a poetic sentiment, for which Caroline, Baroness Nairne is mainly responsible. My romantic tears came from a vision of the Bonnie Prince as he entered Holyrood, dressed in his short tartan coat, his scarlet breeches and military boots, the star of St. Andrew on his breast, a blue ribbon over his shoulder, and the famous blue velvet bonnet and white cockade. He must have looked so brave and handsome and hopeful at that moment, and the moment was so sadly brief, that when the band played the plaintive air I kept hearing the words,--
'Mony a heart will break in twa,
Should he no come back again.'
He did come back again to me that evening, and held a phantom levee behind the Marchioness of Heatherdale's shoulder. His 'ghaist' looked bonnie and rosy and confident, yet all the time the band was playing the requiem for his lost cause and buried hopes."
I looked towards the fire to hide the moisture that crept again into my eyes, and my glance fell upon Francesca sitting dreamily on a hassock in front of the cheerful blaze, her chin in the hollow of her palm, and the Reverend Ronald standing on the hearth-rug gazing at her, the poker in his hand, and his heart, I regret to say, in such an exposed position on his sleeve that even Salemina could have seen it had she turned her eyes that way.
Jean Dalziel broke the momentary silence: "I am sure I never hear the last two lines,--
'Better lo'ed ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again?'
without a lump in my throat," and she hummed the lovely melody. "It is all as you say purely impersonal and poetic. My mother is an Englishwoman, but she sings 'Dumfounder'd the English saw, they saw,' with the greatest fire and fury."
I think I was never so completely under the spell of a country as I am of Scotland. I made this acknowledgment freely, but I knew that it would provoke comment from my compatriots.
Oh yes, my dear, you have been just as spellbound before, only you don't remember it, replied Salemina promptly. "I have never seen a person more perilously appreciative or receptive than you."
'Perilously' is just the word, chimed in Francesca delightedly; "when you care for a place you grow porous, as it were, until after a time you are precisely like blotting-paper. Now, there was Italy, for example. After eight weeks in Venice you were completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was repulsive to you. Cobblestones? 'Ordinario, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float forever thus!' You bathed your spirit in sunshine and color; I can hear you murmur now, 'O Venezia benedetta! non ti voglio lasciar!'"
It was just the same when she spent a month in France with the Baroness de Hautenoblesse, continued Salemina. "When she returned to America it is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,--the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of blotting-paper, as Miss Monroe says, and France had written itself all over her."
I don't wish to interfere with anybody's diagnosis, I interposed at the first possible moment, "but perhaps after you've both finished your psychologic investigation the subject may be allowed to explain herself from the inside, so to speak. I won't deny the spell of Italy, but I think the spell that Scotland casts over one is quite a different thing, more spiritual, more difficult to break. Italy's charm has something physical in it; it is born of blue sky, sunlit waves, soft atmosphere, orange sails and yellow moons, and appeals more to the senses. In Scotland the climate certainly has naught to do with it, but the imagination is somehow made captive. I am not enthralled by the past of Italy or France, for instance."
Of course you are not at the present moment, said Francesca, "because you are enthralled by the past of Scotland, and even you cannot be the slave of two pasts at the same time."
I never was particularly enthralled by Italy's past, I argued with exemplary patience, "but the romance of Scotland has a flavor all its own. I do not quite know the secret of it."
It's the kilts and the pipes, said Francesca.
No, the history. (This from Salemina.)
Or Sir Walter and the literature, suggested Mr. Macdonald.
Or the songs and ballads, ventured Jean Dalziel.
There! I exclaimed triumphantly, "you see for yourselves you have named avenue after avenue along which one's mind is led in charmed subjection. Where can you find battles that kindle your fancy like Falkirk and Flodden and Culloden and Bannockburn? Where a sovereign that attracts, baffles, repels, allures, like Mary Queen of Scots,--and where, tell me where, is there a Pretender like Bonnie Prince Charlie? Think of the spirit in those old Scottish matrons who could sing:--
'I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel,
My rippling-kame and spinning-wheel,
To buy my lad a tartan plaid,
A braid sword, durk, and white cockade.'"
Yes, chimed in Salemina when I had finished quoting, "or that other verse that goes,--
'I ance had sons, I now hae nane,
I bare them toiling sairlie;
But I would bear them a' again
To lose them a' for Charlie!'
Isn't the enthusiasm almost beyond belief at this distance of time?" she went on; "and isn't it a curious fact, as Mr. Macdonald told me a moment ago, that though the whole country was vocal with songs for the lost cause and the fallen race, not one in favor of the victors ever became popular?"
Sympathy for the under dog, as Miss Monroe's countrywomen would say picturesquely, remarked Mr. Macdonald.
I don't see why all the vulgarisms in the dictionary should be foisted on the American girl, retorted Francesca loftily, "unless, indeed, it is a determined attempt to find spots upon the sun for fear we shall worship it!"
Quite so, quite so! returned the Reverend Ronald, who has had reason to know that this phrase reduces Miss Monroe to voiceless rage.
The Stuart charm and personal magnetism must have been a powerful factor in all that movement, said Salemina, plunging hastily back into the topic to avert any further recrimination. "I suppose we feel it even now, and if I had been alive in 1745 I should probably have made myself ridiculous. 'Old maiden ladies,' I read this morning, 'were the last leal Jacobites in Edinburgh; spinsterhood in its loneliness remained ever true to Prince Charlie and the vanished dreams of youth.'"
Yes, continued the Dominie, "the story is told of the last of those Jacobite ladies who never failed to close her Prayer-Book and stand erect in silent protest when the prayer for 'King George III. and the reigning family' was read by the congregation."
Do you remember the prayer of the Reverend Neil McVicar in St. Cuthbert's? asked Mr. Macdonald. "It was in 1745, after the victory at Prestonpans, when a message was sent to the Edinburgh ministers, in the name of 'Charles, Prince Regent,' desiring them to open their churches next day as usual. McVicar preached to a large congregation, many of whom were armed Highlanders, and prayed for George II., and also for Charles Edward, in the following fashion: 'Bless the king! Thou knowest what king I mean. May the crown sit long upon his head! As for that young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown, we beseech Thee to take him to Thyself and give him a crown of glory!'"
Ah, what a pity the Bonnie Prince had not died after his meteor victory at Falkirk! exclaimed Jean Dalziel, when we had finished laughing at Mr. Macdonald's story.
Or at Culloden, 'where, quenched in blood on the Muir of Drummossie, the star of the Stuarts sank forever,' quoted the Dominie. "There is where his better self died; would that the young Chevalier had died with it! By the way, doctor, we must not sit here eating goodies and sipping tea until the dinner-hour, for these ladies have doubtless much to do for their flitting" (a pretty Scots word for "moving").
We are quite ready for our flitting so far as packing is concerned, Salemina assured him. "Would that we were as ready in spirit! Miss Hamilton has even written her farewell poem, which I am sure she will read for the asking."
She will read it without that formality, murmured Francesca. "She has lived and toiled only for this moment, and the poem is in her pocket."
Delightful! said the doctor flatteringly. "Has she favored you already? Have you heard it, Miss Monroe?"
Have we heard it! ejaculated that young person. "We have heard nothing else all the morning! What you will take for local color is nothing but our mental life-blood, which she has mercilessly drawn to stain her verses. We each tried to write a Scottish poem, and as Miss Hamilton's was better, or perhaps I might say less bad, than ours, we encouraged her to develop and finish it. I wanted to do an imitation of Lindsay's
'Adieu, Edinburgh! thou heich triumphant town,
Within whose bounds richt blithefull have I been!'
but it proved too difficult. Miss Hamilton's general idea was that we should write some verses in good plain English. Then we were to take out all the final g's, and indeed the final letters from all the words wherever it was possible, so that _full_, _awful_, _call_, _ball_, _hall_, _and away_ should be _fu'_, _awfu'_, _ca'_, _ba'_, _ha'_, _an' awa'_. This alone gives great charm and character to a poem; but we were also to change all words ending in _ow_ into _aw_. This doesn't injure the verse, you see, as _blaw_ and _snaw_ rhyme just as well as _blow_ and _snow_, beside bringing tears to the common eye with their poetic associations. Similarly, if we had _daughter_ and _slaughter_, we were to write them _dochter_ and _slauchter_, substituting in all cases _doon_, _froon_, _goon_, and _toon_, for _down_, _frown_, _gown_, and _town_. Then we made a list of Scottish idols,--pet words, national institutions, stock phrases, beloved objects,--convinced if we could weave them in we should attain 'atmosphere.' Here is the first list; it lengthened speedily: thistle, tartan, haar, haggis, kirk, claymore, parritch, broom, whin, sporran, whaup, plaid, scone, collops, whiskey, mutch, cairngorm, oatmeal, brae, kilt, brose, heather. Salemina and I were too devoted to common sense to succeed in this weaving process, so Penelope triumphed and won the first prize, both for that and also because she brought in a saying given us by Miss Dalziel, about the social classification of all Scotland into 'the gentlemen of the North, men of the South, people of the West, fowk o' Fife, and the Paisley bodies.' We think that her success came chiefly from her writing the verses with a Scotch plaid lead-pencil. What effect the absorption of so much red, blue, and green paint will have I cannot fancy, but she ate off--and up--all the tartan glaze before finishing the poem; it had a wonderfully stimulating effect, but the end is not yet!"
Of course there was a chorus of laughter when the young wretch exhibited my battered pencil, bought in Princes Street yesterday, its gay Gordon tints sadly disfigured by the destroying tooth, not of Time, but of a bard in the throes of composition.
We bestowed a consolation prize on Salemina, continued Francesca, "because she succeeded in getting _hoots_, _losh_, _havers_, and _blathers_ into one line, but naturally she could not maintain such an ideal standard. Read your verses, Pen, though there is little hope that our friends will enjoy them as much as you do. Whenever Miss Hamilton writes anything of this kind, she emulates her distinguished ancestor Sir William Hamilton, who always fell off his own chair in fits of laughter when he was composing verses."
With this inspiring introduction I read my lines as follows:--
AN AMERICAN LADY'S FAREWELL TO EDINBURGH
THE MUSE BEING SOMEWHAT UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF
THE SCOTTISH BALLAD
I canna thole my ain toun,
Sin' I hae dwelt i' this;
To hide in Edinboro' reek,
Wad be the tap o' bliss.
Yon bonnie plaid aboot me hap,
The skirlin' pipes gae bring,
With thistles fair tie up my hair,
While I of Scotia sing.
The collops an' the cairngorms,
The haggis an' the whin,
The 'Stablished, Free, an' U. P. kirks,
The hairt convinced o' sin,--
The parritch an' the heather-bell,
The snawdrap on the shaw,
The bit lam's bleatin' on the braes,--
How can I leave them a'!
How can I leave the marmalade
An' bonnets o' Dundee?
The haar, the haddies, an' the brose,
The East win' blawin' free!
How can I lay my sporran by,
An' sit me doun at hame,
Wi'oot a Hieland philabeg
Or hyphenated name?
I lo'e the gentry o' the North,
The Southern men I lo'e,
The canty people o' the West,
The Paisley bodies too.
The pawky fowk o' Fife are dear,--
Sae dear are ane an' a',
That e'en to think that we maun pairt
Maist braks my hairt in twa.
So fetch me tartans, heather, scones,
An' dye my tresses red;
I'd deck me like th' unconquer'd Scots
Wha hae wi' Wallace bled.
Then bind my claymore to my side,
My kilt an' mutch gae bring;
While Scottish lays soun' i' my lugs
McKinley's no my king,--
For Charlie, bonnie Stuart Prince,
Has turned me Jacobite;
I'd wear displayed the white cockade,
An' (whiles) for him I'd fight!
An' (whiles) I'd fight for a' that's Scotch,
Save whuskey an' oatmeal,
For wi' their ballads i' my bluid,
Nae Scot could be mair leal!
I fancied that I had pitched my verses in so high a key that no one could mistake their burlesque intention. What was my confusion, however, to have one of the company remark when I finished, "Extremely pretty; but a mutch, you know, is an article of _woman's_ apparel."
Mr. Macdonald flung himself gallantly into the breach. He is such a dear fellow! So quick, so discriminating, so warm-hearted!
Don't pick flaws in Miss Hamilton's finest line! That picture of a fair American, clad in a kilt and mutch, decked in heather and scones, and brandishing a claymore, will live forever in my memory. Don't clip the wings of her imagination! You will be telling her soon that one doesn't tie one's hair with thistles, nor couple collops with cairngorms.
Somebody sent Francesca a great bunch of yellow broom, late that afternoon. There was no name in the box, she said, but at night she wore the odorous tips in the bosom of her black dinner-gown, and standing erect in her dark hair like golden aigrettes.
When she came into my room to say good-night, she laid the pretty frock in one of my trunks, which was to be filled with the garments of fashionable society and left behind in Edinburgh. The next moment I chanced to look on the floor, and discovered a little card, a bent card, with two lines written on it:--
"_Better lo'ed ye canna be, Will ye no come back again?_
"We have received many invitations in that handwriting. I know it well, and so does Francesca, though it is blurred; and the reason for this, according to my way of thinking, is that it has been lying next the moist stems of flowers, and, unless I do her wrong, very near to somebody's warm heart as well.
I will not betray her to Salemina, even to gain a victory over that blind and deaf but much beloved woman. How could I, with my heart beating high at the thought of seeing my ain dear laddie before many days!
"Oh, love, love, lassie, Love is like a dizziness: It winna let a puir body Gang aboot his business.
"Now she's cast aff her bonny shoon Made o' gilded leather, And she's put on her Hieland brogues To skip amang the heather. And she's cast aff her bonny goon Made o' the silk and satin, And she's put on a tartan plaid To row amang the braken.
"Lizzie Baillie.
We are in the East Neuk o' Fife; we are in Pettybaw; we are neither boarders nor lodgers; we are residents, inhabitants, householders, and we live (live, mind you) in a wee theekit hoosie in the old loaning. Words fail to tell you how absolutely Scotch we are and how blissfully happy. It is a happiness, I assure you, achieved through great tribulation. Salemina and I traveled many miles in railway trains, and many in various other sorts of wheeled vehicles, while the ideal ever beckoned us onward. I was determined to find a romantic lodging, Salemina a comfortable one, and this special combination of virtues is next to impossible, as every one knows. Linghurst was too much of a town; Bonnie Craig had no respectable inn; Whinnybrae was struggling to be a watering-place; Broomlea had no golf course within ten miles, and we intended to go back to our native land and win silver goblets in mixed foursomes; the "new toun o' Fairloch" (which looked centuries old) was delightful, but we could not find apartments there; Pinkie Leith was nice, but they were tearing up the "fore street" and laying drain-pipes in it. Strathdee had been highly recommended, but it rained when we were in Strathdee, and nobody can deliberately settle in a place where it rains during the process of deliberation. No train left this moist and dripping hamlet for three hours, so we took a covered trap and drove onward in melancholy mood. Suddenly the clouds lifted and the rain ceased; the driver thought we should be having settled weather now, and put back the top of the carriage, saying meanwhile that it was a verra dry simmer this year, and that the crops sairly needed shoo'rs.
Of course, if there is any district in Scotland where for any reason droughts are possible, that is where we wish to settle, I whispered to Salemina; "though, so far as I can see, the Strathdee crops are up to their knees in mud. Here is another wee village. What is this place, driver?"
Pettybaw, mam; a fine toun!
Will there be apartments to let there?
I couldna say, mam.
Susanna Crum's father! How curious that he should live here! I murmured; and at this moment the sun came out, and shone full, or at least almost full, on our future home.
Pettybaw! _Petit bois_, I suppose, said Salemina; "and there, to be sure, it is,--the 'little wood' yonder."
We drove to the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, and, alighting, dismissed the driver. We had still three good hours of daylight, although it was five o'clock, and we refreshed ourselves with a delicious cup of tea before looking for lodgings. We consulted the greengrocer, the baker, and the flesher, about furnished apartments, and started on our quest, not regarding the little posting establishment as a possibility. Apartments we found to be very scarce, and in one or two places that were quite suitable the landlady refused to do any cooking. We wandered from house to house, the sun shining brighter and brighter, and Pettybaw looking lovelier and lovelier; and as we were refused shelter again and again, we grew more and more enamored, as is the manner of human kind. The blue sea sparkled, and Pettybaw Sands gleamed white a mile or two in the distance, the pretty stone church raised its carved spire from the green trees, the manse next door was hidden in vines, the sheep lay close to the gray stone walls and the young lambs nestled close beside them, while the song of the burn, tinkling merrily down the glade on the edge of which we stood, and the cawing of the rooks in the little wood, were the only sounds to be heard.
Salemina, under the influence of this sylvan solitude, nobly declared that she could and would do without a set bath-tub, and proposed building a cabin and living near to nature's heart.
I think, on the whole, we should be more comfortable living near to the inn-keeper's heart, I answered. "Let us go back there and pass the night, trying thus the bed and breakfast, with a view to seeing what they are like,--though they did say in Edinburgh that nobody thinks of living in these wayside hostelries."
Back we went, accordingly, and after ordering dinner came out and strolled idly up the main street. A small sign in the draper's window, heretofore overlooked, caught our eye. "House and Garden To Let. Inquire Within." Inquiring within with all possible speed, we found the draper selling winseys, the draper's assistant tidying the ribbon-box, the draper's wife sewing in one corner, and the draper's baby playing on the clean floor. We were impressed favorably, and entered into negotiations without delay.
The house will be in the loaning; do you mind, ma'am? asked the draper. (We have long since discovered that this use of the verb is a bequest from the Gaelic, in which there is no present tense. Man never is, but always to be blessed, in that language, which in this particular is not unlike old-fashioned Calvinism.)
We went out of the back door and down the green loaning, until we came to the wee stone cottage in which the draper himself lives most of the year, retiring for the warmer months to the back of his shop, and eking out a comfortable income by renting his hearthstone to the summer visitor.
The thatched roof on the wing that formed the kitchen attracted my artist's eye, and we went in to examine the interior, which we found surprisingly attractive. There was a tiny sitting-room, with a fireplace and a microscopic piano; a dining-room adorned with portraits of relatives who looked nervous when they met my eye, for they knew that they would be turned face to the wall on the morrow; four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a back garden so filled with vegetables and flowers that we exclaimed with astonishment and admiration.
But we cannot keep house in Scotland, objected Salemina. "Think of the care! And what about the servants?"
Why not eat at the inn? I suggested. "Think of living in a real loaning, Salemina! Look at the stone floor in the kitchen, and the adorable stuffy box-bed in the wall! Look at the bust of Sir Walter in the hall, and the chromo of Melrose Abbey by moonlight! Look at the lintel over the front door, with a ship, moon, stars, and 1602 carved in the stone! What is food to all this?"
Salemina agreed that it was hardly worth considering; and in truth so many landladies had refused to receive her as a tenant that day, that her spirits were rather low, and she was uncommonly flexible.
It is the lintel and the back garden that rents the hoose, remarked the draper complacently in broad Scotch that I cannot reproduce. He is a house-agent as well as a draper, and went on to tell us that when he had a cottage he could rent in no other way he planted plenty of creepers in front of it. "The baker's hoose is no sae bonnie," he said, "and the linen and cutlery verra scanty, but there is a yellow laburnum growin' by the door: the leddies see that, and forget to ask aboot the linen. It depends a good bit on the weather, too; it is easy to let a hoose when the sun shines upon it."
We hardly dare undertake regular housekeeping, I said; "do your tenants ever take meals at the inn?"
I couldna say, mam. (Dear, dear, the Crums are a large family!)
If we did that, we should still need a servant to keep the house tidy, said Salemina, as we walked away. "Perhaps housemaids are to be had, though not nearer than Edinburgh, I fancy."
This gave me an idea, and I slipped over to the post-office while Salemina was preparing for dinner, and dispatched a telegram to Mrs. M'Collop at Breadalbane Terrace, asking her if she could send a reliable general servant to us, capable of cooking simple breakfasts and caring for a house.
We had scarcely finished our Scotch broth, fried haddies, mutton-chops, and rhubarb tart when I received an answer from Mrs. M'Collop to the effect that her sister's husband's niece, Jane Grieve, could join us on the morrow if desired. The relationship was an interesting fact, though we scarcely thought the information worth the additional threepence we paid for it in the telegram; however, Mrs. M'Collop's comfortable assurance, together with the quality of the rhubarb tart and mutton-chops, brought us to a decision. Before going to sleep we rented the draper's house, named it Bide-a-Wee Cottage, engaged daily luncheons and dinners for three persons at the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, telegraphed to Edinburgh for Jane Grieve, to Callender for Francesca, and dispatched a letter to Paris for Mr. Beresford, telling him we had taken a "wee theekit hoosie" and that the "yett was ajee" whenever he chose to come.
Possibly it would have been wiser not to send for them until we were settled, I said reflectively. "Jane Grieve may not prove a suitable person."
The name somehow sounds too young and inexperienced, observed Salemina, "and what association have I with the phrase 'sister's husband's niece'?"
"You have heard me quote Lewis Carroll's verse, perhaps:-- 'He thought he saw a buffalo Upon the chimney-piece; He looked again and found it was His sister's husband's niece: Unless you leave the house,"" he said,
"I'll send for the police!'
The only thing that troubles me," I went on, "is the question of Willie Beresford's place of residence. He expects to be somewhere within easy walking or cycling distance,--four or five miles at most."
He won't be desolate even if he doesn't have a thatched roof, a pansy garden, and a blossoming shrub, said Salemina sleepily, for our business arrangements and discussions had lasted well into the evening. "What he will want is a lodging where he can have frequent sight and speech of you. How I dread him! How I resent his sharing of you with us! I don't know why I use the word 'sharing,' forsooth! There is nothing half so fair and just in his majesty's greedy mind. Well, it's the way of the world; only it is odd, with the universe of women to choose from, that he must needs take you. Strathdee seems the most desirable place for him, if he has a mackintosh and rubber boots. Inchcaldy is another town near here that we didn't see at all,--that might do; the draper's wife says that we can send fine linen to the laundry there."
"Inchcaldy? Oh yes, I think we heard of it in Edinburgh--at least I have some association with the name: it has a fine golf course, I believe, and very likely we ought to have looked at it, though for my part I have no regrets. Nothing can equal Pettybaw; and I am so pleased to be a Scottish householder! Aren't we just like Bessie Bell and Mary Gray? 'They were twa bonnie lassies; They biggit a bower on yon burnbrae, An' theekit it ower wi' rashes.' Think of our stone-floored kitchen, Salemina! Think of the real box-bed in the wall for little Jane Grieve! She will have red-gold hair, blue eyes, and a pink cotton gown. Think of our own cat! Think how Francesca will admire the 1602 lintel! Think of our back garden, with our own 'neeps' and vegetable marrows growing in it! Think how they will envy us at home when they learn that we have settled down into Scottish yeowomen! 'It's oh, for a patch of land! It's oh, for a patch of land! Of all the blessings tongue can name, There's nane like a patch of land!' Think of Willie coming to step on the floor and look at the bed and stroke the cat and covet the lintel and walk in the garden and weed the turnips and pluck the marrows that grow by our ain wee theekit hoosie!
"Penelope, you appear slightly intoxicated! Do close the window and come to bed.
I am intoxicated with the caller air of Pettybaw, I rejoined, leaning on the window-sill and looking at the stars, while I thought: "Edinburgh was beautiful; it is the most beautiful gray city in the world; it lacked one thing only to make it perfect, and Pettybaw will have that before many moons.
'Oh, Willie's rare an' Willie's fair
An' Willie's wondrous bonny;
An' Willie's hecht to marry me
Gin e'er he marries ony.
'O gentle wind that bloweth south,
From where my love repaireth,
Convey a word from his dear mouth,
An' tell me how he fareth.'"
Gae tak' awa' the china plates, Gae tak' them far frae me; And bring to me a wooden dish, It's that I'm best used wi'. And tak' awa' thae siller spoons The like I ne'er did see, And bring to me the horn cutties, They're good eneugh for me.
"Earl Richard's Wedding.
The next day was one of the most cheerful and one of the most fatiguing that I ever spent. Salemina and I moved every article of furniture in our wee theekit hoosie from the place where it originally stood to another and a better place: arguing, of course, over the precise spot it should occupy, which was generally upstairs if the thing were already down, or downstairs if it were already up. We hid all the more hideous ornaments of the draper's wife, and folded away her most objectionable tidies and table-covers, replacing them with our own pretty draperies. There were only two pictures in the sitting-room, and as an artist I would not have parted with them for worlds. The first was The Life of a Fireman, which could only remind one of the explosion of a mammoth tomato, and the other was The Spirit of Poetry Calling Burns from the Plough. Burns wore white knee-breeches, military boots, a splendid waistcoat with lace ruffles, and carried a cocked hat. To have been so dressed he must have known the Spirit was intending to come. The plough-horse was a magnificent Arabian, whose tail swept the freshly furrowed earth, while the Spirit of Poetry was issuing from a practicable wigwam on the left, and was a lady of such ample dimensions that no poet would have dared say "no" when she called him.
The dining-room was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's relations and the draper's wife's relations; all uniformly ugly. (It seems strange that married couples having the least beauty to bequeath to their offspring should persist in having the largest families.) These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to remove, so we obscured them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only breakfasted in the room, and the morning meal is easily digested when one lives in the open air. We arranged flowers everywhere, and bought potted plants at a little nursery hard by. We apportioned the bedrooms, giving Francesca the hardest bed,--as she is the youngest, and wasn't here to choose,--me the next hardest, and Salemina the best; Francesca the largest looking-glass and wardrobe, me the best view, and Salemina the biggest bath. We bought housekeeping stores, distributing our patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and dusters from the rival drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the baker, milk and cream from the plumber, who keeps three cows, interviewed the flesher about chops; in fact, no young couple facing love in a cottage ever had a busier or happier time than we; and at sundown, when Francesca arrived, we were in the pink of order, standing under our own lintel, ready to welcome her to Pettybaw. As to being strangers in a strange land, we had a bowing acquaintance with everybody on the main street of the tiny village, and were on terms of considerable intimacy with half a dozen families, including dogs and babies.
Francesca was delighted with everything, from the station (Pettybaw Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name, which she thought as perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a "tirling-pin," that old-time precursor of knockers and bells, at an antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at once, taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and the draper's wife ran down the loaning to see if we were in need of anything. The twisted bar of iron stands out from the door and the ring is drawn up and down over a series of nicks, making a rasping noise. The lovers and ghaists in the old ballads always "tirled at the pin," you remember; that is, touched it gently.
Francesca brought us letters from Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in opening Willie's, to learn that he begged us to find a place in Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as convenient; for in that case he could accept an invitation he had just received to visit his friend Robin Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.
It is not the visit at the castle I wish so much, you may be sure, he wrote, "as the fact that Lady Ardmore will make everything pleasant for you. You will like my friend Robin Anstruther, who is Lady Ardmore's youngest brother, and who is going to her to be nursed and coddled after a baddish accident in the hunting-field. He is very sweet-tempered, and will get on well with Francesca"--
I don't see the connection, rudely interrupted that spirited young person.
I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had in Edinburgh; but if my remembrance serves me, she always enrolls a goodly number of victims, whether she has any immediate use for them or not.
Mr. Beresford's manners have not been improved by his residence in Paris, observed Francesca, with resentment in her tone and delight in her eye.
Mr. Beresford's manners are always perfect, said Salemina loyally, "and I have no doubt that this visit to Lady Ardmore will be extremely pleasant for him, though very embarrassing to us. If we are thrown into forced intimacy with a castle" (Salemina spoke of it as if it had fangs and a lashing tail), "what shall we do in this draper's hut?"
Salemina! I expostulated, "the bears will devour you as they did the ungrateful child in the fairy-tale. I wonder at your daring to use the word 'hut' in connection with our wee theekit hoosie!"
They will never understand that we are doing all this for the novelty of it, she objected. "The Scottish nobility and gentry probably never think of renting a house for a joke. Imagine Lord and Lady Ardmore, the young Ardmores, Robin Anstruther, and Willie Beresford calling upon us in this sitting-room! We ourselves would have to sit in the hall and talk in through the doorway."
All will be well, Francesca assured her soothingly. "We shall be pardoned much because we are Americans, and will not be expected to know any better. Besides, the gifted Miss Hamilton is an artist, and that covers a multitude of sins against conventionality. When the castle people 'tirl at the pin,' I will appear as the maid, if you like, following your example at Mrs. Bobby's cottage in Belvern, Pen."
And it isn't as if there were many houses to choose from, Salemina, nor as if Bide-a-Wee Cottage were cheap, I continued. "Think of the rent we pay and keep your head high. Remember that the draper's wife says there is nothing half so comfortable in Inchcaldy, although that is twice as large a town."
_Inchcaldy!_ ejaculated Francesca, sitting down heavily upon the sofa and staring at me.
Inchcaldy, my dear,--spelled _caldy_, but pronounced _cawdy_; the town where you are to take your nonsensical little fripperies to be laundered.
Where is Inchcaldy? How far away?
About five miles, I believe, but a lovely road.
Well, she exclaimed bitterly, "of course Scotland is a small, insignificant country; but, tiny as it is, it presents some liberty of choice, and why you need have pitched upon Pettybaw, and brought me here, when it is only five miles from Inchcaldy, and a lovely road besides, is more than I can understand!"
In what way has Inchcaldy been so unhappy as to offend you? I asked.
It has not offended me, save that it chances to be Ronald Macdonald's parish,--that is all.
Ronald Macdonald's parish! we repeated automatically.
Certainly,--you must have heard him mention Inchcaldy; and how queer he will think it that I have come to Pettybaw, under all the circumstances!
We do not know 'all the circumstances,' quoted Salemina somewhat haughtily; "and you must remember, my dear, that our opportunities for speech with Mr. Macdonald have been very rare when you were present. For my part, I was always in such a tremor of anxiety during his visits lest one or both of you should descend to blows that I remember no details of his conversation. Besides, we did not choose Pettybaw; we discovered it by chance as we were driving from Strathdee to St. Rules. How were we to know that it was near this fatal Inchcaldy? If you think it best, we will hold no communication with the place, and Mr. Macdonald need never know you are here."
I thought Francesca looked rather startled at this proposition. At all events she said hastily, "Oh well, let it go; we could not avoid each other long, anyway, though it is very awkward, of course; you see, we did not part friends."
I thought I had never seen you on more cordial terms, remarked Salemina.
But you weren't there, answered Francesca unguardedly.
Weren't where?
Weren't there.
Where?
At the station.
What station?
The station in Edinburgh from which I started for the Highlands.
You never said that he came to see you off.
The matter was too unimportant for notice; and the more I think of his being here, the less I mind it, after all; and so, dull care, begone! When I first meet him on the sands or in the loaning, I shall say, 'Dear me, is it Mr. Macdonald! What brought you to our quiet hamlet?' (I shall put the responsibility on him, you know.) 'That is the worst of these small countries,--fowk are aye i' the gait! When we part forever in America, we are able to stay parted, if we wish.' Then he will say, 'Quite so, quite so; but I suppose even you, Miss Monroe, will allow that a minister may not move his church to please a lady.' 'Certainly not,' I shall reply, 'eespecially when it is Estaiblished!' Then he will laugh, and we shall be better friends for a few moments; and then I shall tell him my latest story about the Scotchman who prayed, 'Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.'
Salemina moaned at the delightful prospect opening before us, while I went to the piano and caroled impersonally:--
"Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth, And leave my love behind me? Why did I venture to the north With one that did not mind me? I'm sure I've seen a better limb And twenty better faces; But still my mind it runs on him When I am at the races!
"Francesca left the room at this, and closed the door behind her with such energy that the bust of Sir Walter rocked on the hall shelf. Running upstairs she locked herself in her bedroom, and came down again only to help us receive Jane Grieve, who arrived at eight o'clock.
In times of joy, Salemina, Francesca, and I occasionally have our trifling differences of opinion, but in hours of affliction we are as one flesh. An all-wise Providence sent us Jane Grieve for fear that we should be too happy in Pettybaw. Plans made in heaven for the discipline of sinful human flesh are always successful, and this was no exception.
We had sent a "machine" from the inn to meet her, and when it drew up at the door we went forward to greet the rosy little Jane of our fancy. An aged person, wearing a rusty black bonnet and shawl, and carrying what appeared to be a tin cake-box and a baby's bath-tub, descended rheumatically from the vehicle and announced herself as Miss Grieve. She was too old to call by her Christian name, too sensitive to call by her surname, so Miss Grieve she remained, as announced, to the end of the chapter, and our rosy little Jane died before she was actually born. The man took her curious luggage into the kitchen, and Salemina escorted her thither, while Francesca and I fell into each other's arms and laughed hysterically.
Nobody need tell me that she is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece, she whispered, "though she may possibly be somebody's grandaunt. Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Gummidge?"
Salemina returned in a quarter of an hour, and sank dejectedly on the sofa.
Run over to the inn, Francesca, she said, "and order bacon and eggs at eight-thirty to-morrow morning. Miss Grieve thinks we had better not breakfast at home until she becomes accustomed to the surroundings."
Shall we allow her to become accustomed to them? I questioned.
She came up from Glasgow to Edinburgh for the day, and went to see Mrs. M'Collop just as our telegram arrived. She was living with an 'extremely nice family' in Glasgow, and only broke her engagement in order to try Fifeshire air for the summer; so she will remain with us as long as she is benefited by the climate.
Can't we pay her for a month and send her away?
How can we? She is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece, and we intend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She has a nice ladylike appearance, but when she takes her bonnet off she looks seventy years old.
She ought always to keep it off, then, returned Francesca, "for she looked eighty with it on. We shall have to soothe her last moments, of course, and pay her funeral expenses. Did you offer her a cup of tea and show her the box-bed?"
Yes; she said she was muckle obleeged to me, but the coals were so poor and hard she couldna batter them up to start a fire the nicht, and she would try the box-bed to see if she could sleep in it. I am glad to remember that it was you who telegraphed for her, Penelope.
Let there be no recriminations, I responded; "let us stand shoulder to shoulder in this calamity,--isn't there a story called 'Calamity Jane?' We might live at the inn, and give her the cottage for a summer residence, but I utterly refuse to be parted from our cat and the 1602 lintel."
After I have once described Miss Grieve I shall not suffer her to begloom these pages as she did our young lives. She is so exactly like her kind in America that she cannot be looked upon as a national type. Everywhere we go we see fresh, fair-haired, sonsie lassies; why should we have been visited with this affliction, we who have no courage in a foreign land to rid ourselves of it?
She appears at the door of the kitchen with some complaint, and stands there talking to herself in a depressing murmur until she arrives at the next grievance. Whenever we hear this, which is whenever we are in the sitting-room, we amuse ourselves by chanting lines of melancholy poetry which correspond to the sentiments she seems to be uttering. It is the only way the infliction can be endured, for the sitting-room is so small we cannot keep the door closed habitually. The effect of this plan is something like the following:--
_She_. "The range has sic a bad draft I canna mak' the fire draw!"
_We_. "But I'm ower auld for the tears to start,
An' sae the sighs maun blaw!"
_She_. "The clock i' the hall doesna strike. I have to get oot
o' my bed to see the time."
_We_. "The broken hairt it kens
Nae second spring again!"
_She_. "There are not eneuch jugs i' the hoose."
_We_. "I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought,--
In troth I'm like to greet!"
_She_. "The sink drain is na recht."
_We_. "An' it's oh! to win awa', awa',
An' it's oh! to win awa'!"
_She_. "I canna thole a box-bed!"
_We_. "Ay, waukin' O
Waukin' O an' weary.
Sleep I can get nane,
Ay waukin' O!"
_She_. "It's fair insultin' to rent a hoose wi' so few convenience."
_We_. "An' I'm ower auld to fish ony mair,
An' I hinna the chance to droon."
_She_. "The work is fair sickenin' i' this hoose,
an' a' for ane puir body to do by her lane."
_We_. "How can ye chant, ye little birds,
An' I sae weary, fu' o' care?"
_She_. "Ah, but that was a fine family I lived wi' in Glasgy;
an' it's a wearifu' day's work I've had the day."
_We_. "Oh, why was I spared to cry, wae's me!"
_She_. "Why dinna they leave floo'rs i' the garden, makin'
sic a mess i' the hoose wi' 'em? It's not for the
knowin' what they will be after next!"
_We_. "Oh, waly waly up the bank,
And waly waly doon the brae!"
Miss Grieve's plaints never grow less, though we are sometimes at a loss for appropriate quotations to match them. The poetic interpolations are introduced merely to show the general spirit of her conversation. They take the place of her sighs, which are by their nature unprintable. Many times each day she is wont to sink into one low chair, and, extending her feet in another, close her eyes and murmur undistinguishable plaints which come to us in a kind of rhythmic way. She has such a shaking right hand we have been obliged to give up coffee and have tea, as the former beverage became too unsettled on its journey from the kitchen to the breakfast-table. She says she kens she is a guid cook, though salf-praise is sma' racommendation (sma' as it is she will get no other!); but we have little opportunity to test her skill, as she prepares only our breakfasts of eggs and porridge. Visions of home-made goodies had danced before our eyes, but as the hall clock doesna strike she is unable to rise at any exact hour, and as the range draft is bad, and the coals too hard to batter up wi' a hatchet, we naturally have to content ourselves with the baker's loaf.
And this is a truthful portrait of "Calamity Jane," our one Pettybaw grievance.
Gae farer up the burn to Habbie's Howe, Where a' the sweets o' spring an' simmer grow: Between twa birks, out o'er a little lin, The water fa's an' mak's a singan din; A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass, Kisses, wi' easy whirls, the bord'ring grass.
"The Gentle Shepherd.
That is what Peggy says to Jenny in Allan Ramsay's poem, and if you substitute "Crummylowe" for "Habbie's Howe" in the first line, you will have a lovely picture of the Farm-Steadin'.
You come to it by turning the corner from the inn, first passing the cottage where the lady wishes to rent two rooms for fifteen shillings a week, but will not give much attendance, as she is slightly asthmatic, and the house is always as clean as it is this minute, and the view from the window looking out on Pettybaw Bay canna be surpassed at ony money. Then comes the little house where Will'am Beattie's sister Mary died in May, and there wasna a bonnier woman in Fife. Next is the cottage with the pansy garden, where the lady in the widow's cap takes five o'clock tea in the bay window, and a snug little supper at eight. She has for the first scones and marmalade, and her tea is in a small black teapot under a red cozy with a white muslin cover drawn over it. At eight she has more tea, and generally a kippered herring, or a bit of cold mutton left from the noon dinner. We note the changes in her bill of fare as we pass hastily by and feel admitted quite into the family secrets. Beyond this bay window, which is so redolent of simple peace and comfort that we long to go in and sit down, is the cottage with the double white tulips, the cottage with the collie on the front steps, the doctor's house with the yellow laburnum tree, and then the house where the Disagreeable Woman lives. She has a lovely baby, which, to begin with, is somewhat remarkable, as disagreeable women rarely have babies; or else, having had them, rapidly lose their disagreeableness,--so rapidly that one has not time to notice it. The Disagreeable Woman's house is at the end of the row, and across the road is a wicket gate leading--Where did it lead?--that was the very point. Along the left, as you lean wistfully over the gate, there runs a stone wall topped by a green hedge; and on the right, first furrows of pale fawn, then below, furrows of deeper brown, and mulberry, and red ploughed earth stretching down to waving fields of green, and thence to the sea, gray, misty, opalescent, melting into the pearly white clouds, so that one cannot tell where sea ends and sky begins.
There is a path between the green hedge and the ploughed field, and it leads seductively to the farm-steadin'; or we felt that it might thus lead, if we dared unlatch the wicket gate. Seeing no sign "Private Way," "Trespassers Not Allowed," or other printed defiance to the stranger, we were considering the opening of the gate, when we observed two female figures coming toward us along the path, and paused until they should come through. It was the Disagreeable Woman (though we knew it not) and an elderly friend. We accosted the friend, feeling instinctively that she was framed of softer stuff, and asked her if the path were a private one. It was a question that had never met her ear before, and she was too dull or too discreet to deal with it on the instant. To our amazement, she did not even manage to falter, "I couldna say."
Is the path private? I repeated.
It is certainly the idea to keep it a little private, said the Disagreeable Woman, coming into the conversation without being addressed. "Where do you wish to go?"
Nowhere in particular. The walk looks so inviting we should like to see the end.
It goes only to the Farm, and you can reach that by the highroad; it is only a half-mile farther. Do you wish to call at the Farm?
No, oh no; the path is so very pretty that--
Yes, I see; well, I should call it rather private. And with this she departed; leaving us to stand on the outskirts of paradise, while she went into her house and stared at us from the window as she played with the lovely undeserved baby. But that was not the end of the matter.
We found ourselves there next day, Francesca and I,--Salemina was too proud,--drawn by an insatiable longing to view the beloved and forbidden scene. We did not dare to glance at the Disagreeable Woman's windows, lest our courage should ooze away, so we opened the gate and stole through into the rather private path.
It was a most lovely path; even if it had not been in a sense prohibited, it would still have been lovely, simply on its own merits. There were little gaps in the hedge and the wall, through which we peered into a daisy-starred pasture, where a white bossy and a herd of flaxen-haired cows fed on the sweet green grass. The mellow ploughed earth on the right hand stretched down to the shore-line, and a plough-boy walked up and down the long, straight furrows whistling "My Nannie's awa'." Pettybaw is so far removed from the music-halls that their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its Sylvan shades, and the herd-laddies and plough-boys still sweeten their labors with the old classic melodies.
We walked on and on, determined to come every day; and we settled that if we were accosted by any one, or if our innocent business were demanded, Francesca should ask, "Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live here, and has she any new-laid eggs?"
Soon the gates of the Farm appeared in sight. There was a cluster of buildings, with doves huddling and cooing on the red-tiled roofs,--dairy-houses, workmen's cottages, comely rows of haystacks (towering yellow things with peaked tops); a little pond with ducks and geese chattering together as they paddled about, and for additional music the trickling of two tiny burns making "a singan din" as they wimpled through the bushes. A speckle-breasted thrush perched on a corner of the gray wall and poured his heart out. Overhead there was a chorus of rooks in the tall trees, but there was no sound of human voice save that of the plough-laddie whistling "My Nannie's awa'."
We turned our backs on this darling solitude, and retraced our steps lingeringly. As we neared the wicket gate again we stood upon a bit of jutting rock and peered over the wall, sniffing the hawthorn buds with ecstasy. The white bossy drew closer, treading softly on its daisy carpet; the wondering cows looked up at us as they peacefully chewed their cuds; a man in corduroy breeches came from a corner of the pasture, and with a sharp, narrow hoe rooted out a thistle or two that had found their way into this sweet feeding-ground. Suddenly we heard the swish of a dress behind us, and turned, conscience-stricken, though we had in nothing sinned.
Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live here? stammered Francesca like a parrot.
It was an idiotic time and place for the question. We had certainly arranged that she should ask it, but something must be left to the judgment in such cases. Francesca was hanging over a stone wall regarding a herd of cows in a pasture, and there was no possible shelter for a Mrs. Macstronachlacher within a quarter of a mile. What made the remark more unfortunate was the fact that, though she had on a different dress and bonnet, the person interrogated was the Disagreeable Woman; but Francesca is particularly slow in discerning resemblances. She would have gone on mechanically asking for new-laid eggs, had I not caught her eye and held it sternly. The foe looked at us suspiciously for a moment (Francesca's hats are not easily forgotten), and then vanished up the path, to tell the people at Crummylowe, I suppose, that their grounds were infested by marauding strangers whose curiosity was manifestly the outgrowth of a republican government.
As she disappeared in one direction, we walked slowly in the other; and just as we reached the corner of the pasture where two stone walls meet, and where a group of oaks gives grateful shade, we heard children's voices.
No, no! cried somebody: "it must be still higher at this end, for the tower,--this is where the king will sit. Help me with this heavy one, Rafe. Dandie, mind your foot. Why don't you be making the flag for the ship?--and do keep the Wrig away from us till we finish building!
O lang, lang may the ladyes sit Wi' their face into their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand.
"Sir Patrick Spens.
We forced our toes into the crevices of the wall and peeped stealthily over the top. Two boys of eight or ten years, with two younger children, were busily engaged in building a castle. A great pile of stones had been hauled to the spot, evidently for the purpose of mending the wall, and these were serving as rich material for sport. The oldest of the company, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy in an Eton jacket and broad white collar, was obviously commander-in-chief; and the next in size, whom he called Rafe, was a laddie of eight, in kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy, while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little yokels of another sort. The miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was worthy of the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower, the master builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over the wall. We were properly abashed and ducked our heads discreetly at once, but were reassured by hearing him run rapidly toward us, calling, "Stop, if you please! Have you anything on just now,--are you busy?"
We answered that we were quite at leisure.
Then would you mind coming in to help us to play 'Sir Patrick Spens'? There aren't enough of us to do it nicely.
This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least misplaced. Playing "Sir Patrick Spens" was exactly in our line, little as he suspected it.
Come and help? I said. "Simply delighted! Do come, Fanny dear. How can we get over the wall?"
I'll show you the good broken place! cried Sir Apple-Cheek; and following his directions we scrambled through, while Rafe took off his Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth.
Hurrah! now it will be something like fun! Do you know 'Sir Patrick Spens'?
Every word of it. Don't you want us to pass an examination before you allow us in the game?
No, he answered gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the 'eldern knight,'--you remember him?"
Certainly; he sat at the king's right knee.
Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time, and I the other part, because everybody likes to be him; but there's nobody left for the 'lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is the only maiden to sit on the shore, and she always forgets to comb her hair and weep at the right time.
The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest) was seated on the grass, with her fat hands full of pink thyme and white wild woodruff. The sun shone on her curly flaxen head. She wore a dark blue cotton frock with white dots, and a short-sleeved pinafore; and though she was utterly useless from a dramatic point of view, she was the sweetest little Scotch dumpling I ever looked upon. She had been tried and found wanting in most of the principal parts of the ballad, but when left out of the performance altogether she was wont to scream so lustily that all Crummylowe rushed to her assistance.
Now let us practice a bit to see if we know what we are going to do, said Sir Apple-Cheek. "Rafe, you can be Sir Patrick this time. The reason why we all like to be Sir Patrick," he explained, turning to me, "is that the lords o' Noroway say to him,--
'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd,
And a' our Queenis fee;'
and then he answers,--
'Ye lee! ye lee! ye leers loud,
Fu' loudly do ye lee!'
and a lot of splendid things like that. Well, I'll be the king," and accordingly he began:--
"The King sits in Dunfermline tower, Drinking the bluid-red wine. 'O whaur will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship o' mine?'
"A dead silence ensued, whereupon the king said testily, "Now, Dandie, you never remember you're the eldern knight; go on!"
Thus reminded, Dandie recited:--
"O up and spake an eldern knight Sat at the King's right knee, 'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever sailed the sea.'
"Now I'll write my letter, said the king, who was endeavoring to make himself comfortable in his somewhat contracted tower.
"The King has written a braid letter And sealed it with his hand; And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. Read the letter out loud, Rafe, and then you'll remember what to do.
" "'To Noroway! to Noroway! To Noroway on the faem! The King's daughter of Noroway, 'T is thou maun bring her hame,'
"read Rafe.
Now do the next part!
I can't; I'm going to chuck up that next part. I wish you'd do Sir Pat until it comes to 'Ye lee! ye lee!'
No, that won't do, Rafe. We have to mix up everybody else, but it's too bad to spoil Sir Patrick.
Well, I'll give him to you, then, and be the king. I don't mind so much now that we've got such a good tower; and why can't I stop up there even after the ship sets sail, and look out over the sea with a telescope? That's the way Elizabeth did the time she was king.
You can stay till you have to come down and be a dead Scots lord. I'm not going to lie there as I did last time, with nobody but the Wrig for a Scots lord, and her forgetting to be dead!
Sir Apple-Cheek then essayed the hard part "chucked up" by Rafe. It was rather difficult, I confess, as the first four lines were in pantomime and required great versatility:--
"The first word that Sir Patrick read, Fu' loud, loud laughed he; The neist word that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his e'e.
"These conflicting emotions successfully simulated, Sir Patrick resumed:--
"'O wha is he has dune this deed, And tauld the King o' me,-- To send us out, at this time o' the year, To sail upon the sea?'
"Then the king stood up in the unstable tower and shouted his own orders:--
"'Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet, Our ship maun sail the faem; The King's daughter o' Noroway, 'Tis we maun fetch her hame.'
"Can't we rig the ship a little better? demanded our stage manager at this juncture. "It isn't half as good as the tower."
Ten minutes' hard work, in which we assisted, produced something a trifle more nautical and seaworthy than the first ship. The ground with a few boards spread upon it was the deck. Tarpaulin sheets were arranged on sticks to represent sails, and we located the vessel so cleverly that two slender trees shot out of the middle of it and served as the tall topmasts.
Now let us make believe that we've hoisted our sails on 'Mononday morn' and been in Noroway 'weeks but only twae,' said our leading man; "and your time has come now," turning to us.
We felt indeed that it had; but plucking up sufficient courage for the lords o' Noroway, we cried accusingly,--
"'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd, And a' our Queenis fee!'
"Oh, but Sir Apple-Cheek was glorious as he roared virtuously:--
"'Ye lee! ye lee! ye leers loud, Fu' loudly do ye lee! 'For I brocht as much white monie As gane my men and me, An' I brocht a half-fou o' gude red gowd Out ower the sea wi' me. 'But betide me weil, betide me wae, This day I'se leave the shore; And never spend my King's monie 'Mong Noroway dogs no more. 'Make ready, make ready, my merry men a', Our gude ship sails the morn.' Now you be the sailors, please!
"Glad to be anything but Noroway dogs, we recited obediently:--
"'Now, ever alake, my master dear, I fear a deadly storm! And if ye gang to sea, master, I fear we'll come to harm.'
"We added much to the effect of this stanza by flinging ourselves on the turf and embracing Sir Patrick's knees, with which touch of melodrama he was enchanted.
Then came a storm so terrible that I can hardly trust myself to describe its fury. The entire _corps dramatique_ personated the elements, and tore the gallant ship in twain, while Sir Patrick shouted in the teeth of the gale,--
"'O whaur will I get a gude sailor To tak' my helm in hand, Till I get up to the tall topmast To see if I can spy land?'
"I knew the words a trifle better than Francesca, and thus succeeded in forestalling her as the fortunate hero:--
"'O here am I, a sailor gude, To tak' the helm in hand, Till you go up to the tall topmast; But I fear ye'll ne'er spy land.'
"And the heroic sailor was right, for
"He hadna gone a step, a step, A step but only ane, When a bout flew out o' our goodly ship, And the saut sea it came in.
"Then we fetched a web o' the silken claith, and anither o' the twine, as our captain bade us; we wapped them into our ship's side and letna the sea come in; but in vain, in vain. Laith were the gude Scots lords to weet their cork-heeled shune, but they did, and wat their hats abune; for the ship sank in spite of their despairing efforts,
"And mony was the gude lord's son That never mair cam' hame.
"Francesca and I were now obliged to creep from under the tarpaulins and personate the disheveled ladies on the strand.
Will your hair come down? asked the manager gravely.
It will and shall, we rejoined; and it did.
"The ladies wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair.
"Do tear your hair, Jessie! It's the only thing you have to do, and you never do it on time!
The Wrig made ready to howl with offended pride, but we soothed her, and she tore her yellow curls with her chubby hands.
"And lang, lang may the maidens sit Wi' their gowd kaims i' their hair, A waitin' for their ain dear luves, For them they'll see nae mair.
"I did a bit of sobbing here that would have been a credit to Sarah Siddons.
Splendid! Grand! cried Sir Patrick, as he stretched himself fifty fathoms below the imaginary surface, and gave explicit ante-mortem directions to the other Scots lords to spread themselves out in like manner.
"Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, 'T is fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.
"Oh, it is grand! he repeated jubilantly. "If I could only be the king and see it all from Dunfermline tower! Could you be Sir Patrick once, do you think, now that I have shown you how?" he asked Francesca.
Indeed I could! she replied, glowing with excitement (and small wonder) at being chosen for the principal role.
The only trouble is that you do look awfully like a girl in that white frock.
Francesca appeared rather ashamed at her natural disqualifications for the part of Sir Patrick. "If I had only worn my long black cloak!" she sighed.
Oh, I have an idea! cried the boy. "Hand her the minister's gown from the hedge, Rafe. You see, Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe lent us this old gown for a sail; she's doing something to a new one, and this was her pattern."
Francesca slipped it on over her white serge, and the Pettybaw parson should have seen her with the long veil of her dark locks floating over his ministerial garment.
It seems a pity to put up your hair, said the stage manager critically, "because you look so jolly and wild with it down, but I suppose you must; and will you have Rafe's bonnet?"
Yes, she would have Rafe's bonnet; and when she perched it on the side of her head and paced the deck restlessly, while the black gown floated behind in the breeze, we all cheered with enthusiasm, and, having rebuilt the ship, began the play again from the moment of the gale. The wreck was more horribly realistic than ever, this time, because of our rehearsal; and when I crawled from under the masts and sails to seat myself on the beach with the Wrig, I had scarcely strength enough to remove the cooky from her hand and set her a-combing her curly locks.
When our new Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard pillow of Jessie's wild flowers.
Oh, it is fine, that part; but from here is where it always goes wrong! cried the king from the castle tower. "It's too bad to take the maidens away from the strand where they look so bonnie, and Rafe is splendid as the gude sailor, but Dandie looks so silly as one little dead Scots lord; if we only had one more person, young or old, if he was ever so stupid!"
_Would I do?_
This unexpected offer came from behind one of the trees that served as topmasts, and at the same moment there issued from that delightfully secluded retreat Ronald Macdonald, in knickerbockers and a golf cap.
Suddenly as this apparition came, there was no lack of welcome on the children's part. They shouted his name in glee, embraced his legs, and pulled him about like affectionate young bears. Confusion reigned for a moment, while Sir Patrick rose from her sea grave all in a mist of floating hair, from which hung impromptu garlands of pink thyme and green grasses.
Allow me to do the honors, please, Jamie, said Mr. Macdonald, when he could escape from the children's clutches. "Have you been properly presented? I suppose not. Ladies, the young Master of Rowardennan. Jamie, Miss Hamilton and Miss Monroe from the United States of America." Sir Apple-Cheek bowed respectfully. "Let me present the Honorable Ralph Ardmore, also from the castle, together with Dandie Dinmont and the Wrig from Crummylowe. Sir Patrick, it is indeed a pleasure to see you again. Must you take off my gown? I had thought it was past use, but it never looked so well before."
_Your_ gown?
The counterfeit presentment of Sir Patrick vanished as the long drapery flew to the hedge whence it came, and there remained only an offended young goddess, who swung her dark mane tempestuously to one side, plaited it in a thick braid, tossed it back again over her white serge shoulder, and crowded on her sailor hat with unnecessary vehemence.
Yes, _my_ gown; whose else could you more appropriately borrow, pray? Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe presses, sponges, and darns my bachelor wardrobe, but I confess I never suspected that she rented it out for theatrical purposes. I have been calling upon you in Pettybaw; Lady Ardmore was there at the same time. Finding but one of the three American Graces at home, I stayed a few moments only, and am now returning to Inchcaldy by way of Crummylowe. Here he plucked the gown off the hedge and folded it carefully.
Can't we keep it for a sail, Mr. Macdonald? pleaded Jamie. "Mistress Ogilvie said it wasn't any more good."
When Mistress Ogilvie made that remark, replied the Reverend Ronald, "she had no idea that it would ever touch the shoulders of the martyred Sir Patrick Spens. Now I happen to love"--
Francesca hung out a scarlet flag in each cheek, and I was about to say, "Don't mind me!" when he continued:--
As I was saying, I happen to love 'Sir Patrick Spens,'--it is my favorite ballad; so, with your permission, I will take the gown, and you can find something less valuable for a sail!
I could never understand just why Francesca was so annoyed at being discovered in our innocent game. Of course she was prone on Mother Earth and her tresses were much disheveled, but she looked lovely, after all, in comparison with me, the humble "supe" and lightning-change artist; yet I kept my temper,--at least I kept it until the Reverend Ronald observed, after escorting us through the gap in the wall, "By the way, Miss Hamilton, there was a gentleman from Paris at your cottage, and he is walking down the road to meet you."
Walking down the road to meet me, forsooth! Have ministers no brains? The Reverend Mr. Macdonald had wasted five good minutes with his observations, introductions, explanations, felicitations, and adorations, and meantime, regardez-moi, messieurs et mesdames, s'il vous plait! I have been a Noroway dog, a ship-builder, and a gallant sailorman; I have been a gurly sea and a towering gale; I have crawled from beneath broken anchors, topsails, and mizzenmasts to a strand where I have been a suffering lady plying a gowd kaim. My skirt of blue drill has been twisted about my person until it trails in front; my collar is wilted, my cravat untied; I have lost a stud and a sleeve-link; my hair is in a tangled mass, my face is scarlet and dusty--and a gentleman from Paris is walking down the road to meet me!
There were three ladies in a hall-- With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay, There came a lord among them all-- As the primrose spreads so sweetly.
"The Cruel Brother.
Willie Beresford has come to Pettybaw, and that Arcadian village has received the last touch that makes it Paradise.
We are exploring the neighborhood together, and whichever path we take we think it lovelier than the one before. This morning we drove to Pettybaw Sands, Francesca and Salemina following by the footpath and meeting us on the shore. It is all so enchantingly fresh and green on one of these rare bright days: the trig lass bleaching her "claes" on the grass by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild partridges whirring about in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages, and the gardens with rows of currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests jam and tart in every delicious globule. It is a love-colored landscape, we know it full well; and nothing in the fair world about us is half as beautiful as what we see in each other's eyes. Ah, the memories of these first golden mornings together after our long separation. I shall sprinkle them with lavender and lay them away in that dim chamber of the heart where we keep precious things. We all know the chamber. It is fragrant with other hidden treasures, for all of them are sweet, though some are sad. This is the reason why we put a finger on the lip and say "Hush," if we open the door and allow any one to peep in.
We tied the pony by the wayside and alighted: Willie to gather some sprays of the pink veronica and blue speedwell, I to sit on an old bench and watch him in happy idleness. The "white-blossomed slaes" sweetened the air, and the distant hills were gay with golden whin and broom, or flushed with the purply-red of the bell heather.
We heard the note of the cushats from a neighboring bush. They used to build their nests on the ground, so the story goes, but the cows trampled them. Now they are wiser and build higher, and their cry is supposed to be a derisive one, directed to their ancient enemies, "Come noo, Coo, Coo! Come noo!"
A hedgehog crept stealthily along the ground, and at a sudden sound curled himself up like a wee brown bear. There were women working in the fields near by,--a strange sight to our eyes at first, but nothing unusual here, where many of them are employed on the farms all the year round, sowing, weeding, planting, even ploughing in the spring, and in winter working at threshing or in the granary.
An old man, leaning on his staff, came tottering feebly along, and sank down on the bench beside me. He was dirty, ragged, unkempt, and feeble, but quite sober, and pathetically anxious for human sympathy.
I'm achty-sax year auld, he maundered, apropos of nothing, "achty-sax year auld. I've seen five lairds o' Pettybaw, sax placed meenisters, an' seeven doctors. I was a mason an' a stoot mon i' thae days, but it's a meeserable life now. Wife deid, bairns deid! I sit by my lane, an' smoke my pipe, wi' naebody to gi'e me a sup o' water. Achty-sax is ower auld for a mon,--ower auld."
These are the sharp contrasts of life one cannot bear to face when one is young and happy. Willie gave him a half-crown and some tobacco for his pipe, and when the pony trotted off briskly, and we left the shrunken figure alone on his bench as he was lonely in his life, we kissed each other and pledged ourselves to look after him as long as we remain in Pettybaw; for what is love worth if it does not kindle the flames of spirit, open the gates of feeling, and widen the heart to shelter all the little loves and great loves that crave admittance?
As we neared the tiny fishing-village on the sands we met a fishwife brave in her short skirt and eight petticoats, the basket with its two hundred pound weight on her head, and the auld wife herself knitting placidly as she walked along. They look superbly strong, these women; but, to be sure, the "weak anes dee," as one of them told me.
There was an air of bustle about the little quay,--
"That joyfu' din when the boats come in, When the boats come in sae early; When the lift is blue an' the herring-nets fu', And the sun glints in a' things rarely.
"The silvery shoals of fish no longer come so near the shore as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan's had its tongue tied when the "draive" was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away the shining myriads of the deep.
We climbed the shoulder of a great green cliff until we could sit on the rugged rocks at the top and overlook the sea. The bluff is well named Nirly Scaur, and a wild, desolate spot it is, with gray lichen-clad boulders and stunted heather on its summit. In a storm here, the wind buffets and slashes and scourges one like invisible whips, and below, the sea churns itself into foaming waves, driving its "infinite squadrons of wild white horses" eternally toward the shore. It was calm and blue to-day, and no sound disturbed the quiet save the incessant shriek and scream of the rock birds, the kittiwakes, black-headed gulls, and guillemots that live on the sides of these high, sheer craigs. Here the mother guillemot lays her single egg, and here, on these narrow shelves of precipitous rock, she holds it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures, and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots keep up a ceaseless clang of excited conversation, a very riot and wrangle of altercation and argument which the circumstances seem to warrant. The prospective father is obliged to take turns with the prospective mother and hold the one precious egg on the rock while she goes for a fly, a swim, a bite, and a sup. As there are five hundred other parents on the same rock, and the eggs look to be only a couple of inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we should find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots die of nervous prostration.
Willie and I interpreted the clamor somewhat as follows:--
I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don't be clumsy! Wait a minute, I'm not ready. _I'm not ready, I tell you!_ NOW!!
Your egg is so close to mine that I can't breathe--
Move your egg, then, I can't move mine!
You're sitting so close, I can't stretch my wings.
Neither can I. You've got as much room as I have.
I shall tumble if you crowd me.
Go ahead and tumble, then! There is plenty of room in the sea.
Pardon me, but I am afraid I shoved your wife off the rock last night.
Don't mention it. I remember I shoved off your wife's mother last year.
We walked among the tiny whitewashed low-roofed cots, each with its silver-skinned fishes tacked invitingly against the door-frame to dry, until we came to my favorite, the corner cottage in the row. It has beautiful narrow garden strips in front,--solid patches of color in sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls "granny's mutches;" and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognize the head at once, and asked the little woman who it was.
Homer, the graund Greek poet, she answered cheerily; "an' I'm to have anither o' Burns, as tall as Homer, when my daughter comes hame frae E'nbro'."
If the shade of Homer keeps account of his earthly triumphs, I think he is proud of his place in that humble Scotchwoman's gillyflower garden, with his head under the drooping petals of granny's white mutches.
What do you think her "mon" is called in the village? John o' Mary! But he is not alone in his meekness, for there are Jock o' Meg, Willie o' Janet, Jem o' Tibby, and a dozen others. These primitive fishing-villages are the places where all the advanced women ought to congregate, for the wife is head of the house; the accountant, the treasurer, the auditor, the chancellor of the exchequer; and though her husband does catch the fish for her to sell, that is accounted apparently as a detail too trivial for notice.
When we passed Mary's cottage, on our way to the sands next day, Burns's head had been accidentally broken off by the children, and we felt as though we had lost a friend; but Scotch thrift, and loyalty to the dear Ploughman Poet, came to the rescue, and when we returned, Robbie's plaster head had been glued to his body. He smiled at us again from between the two scarlet geraniums, and a tendril of ivy had been gently curled about his neck to hide the cruel wound.
After such long, lovely mornings as this, there is a late luncheon under the shadow of a rock with Salemina and Francesca, an idle chat, or the chapter of a book, and presently Lady Ardmore and her daughter Elizabeth drive down to the sands. They are followed by Robin Anstruther, Jamie, and Ralph on bicycles, and before long the stalwart figure of Ronald Macdonald appears in the distance, just in time for a cup of tea, which we brew in Lady Ardmore's bath-house on the beach.
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways.
"The Cotter's Saturday Night.
We have lived in Pettybaw a very short time, but I see that we have already made an impression upon all grades of society. This was not our intention. We gave Edinburgh as our last place of residence, with the view of concealing our nationality, until such time as we should choose to declare it; that is, when public excitement with regard to our rental of the house in the loaning should have lapsed into a state of indifference. And yet, modest, economical, and commonplace as has been the administration of our affairs, our method of life has evidently been thought unusual, and our conduct not precisely the conduct of other summer visitors. Even our daily purchases, in manner, in number, and in character, seem to be looked upon as eccentric, for whenever we leave a shop, the relatives of the greengrocer, flesher, draper, whoever it may be, bound downstairs, surround him in an eager circle, and inquire the latest news.
In an unwise moment we begged the draper's wife to honor us with a visit and explain the obliquities of the kitchen range and the tortuosities of the sink-spout to Miss Grieve. While our landlady was on the premises, I took occasion to invite her up to my own room, with a view of seeing whether my mattress of pebbles and iron-filings could be supplemented by another of shavings or straw, or some material less provocative of bodily injuries. She was most sympathetic, persuasive, logical, and after the manner of her kind proved to me conclusively that the trouble lay with the too-saft occupant of the bed, not with the bed itself, and gave me statistics with regard to the latter which established its reputation and at the same moment destroyed my own.
She looked in at the various doors casually as she passed up and down the stairs,--all save that of the dining-room, which Francesca had prudently locked to conceal the fact that we had covered the family portraits,--and I noticed at the time that her face wore an expression of mingled grief and astonishment. It seemed to us afterward that there was a good deal more passing up and down the loaning than when we first arrived. At dusk especially, small processions of children and young people walked by our cottage and gave shy glances at the windows.
Finding Miss Grieve in an unusually amiable mood, I inquired the probable cause of this phenomenon. She would not go so far as to give any judicial opinion, but offered a few conjectures.
It might be the tirling-pin; it might be the white satin ribbons on the curtains; it might be the guitars and banjos; it might be the bicycle crate; it might be the profusion of plants; it might be the continual feasting and revelry; it might be the blazing fires in a Pettybaw summer. She thought a much more likely reason, however, was because it had become known in the village that we had moved every stick of furniture in the house out of its accustomed place and taken the dressing-tables away from the windows,--"thae windys," she called them.
I discussed this matter fully with Mr. Anstruther later on. He laughed heartily, but confessed, with an amused relish of his national conservatism, that to his mind there certainly was something radical, advanced, and courageous in taking a dressing-table away from its place, back to the window, and putting it anywhere else in a room. He would be frank, he said, and acknowledge that it suggested an undisciplined and lawless habit of thought, a disregard for authority, a lack of reverence for tradition, and a riotous and unbridled imagination.
This view of the matter gave us exquisite enjoyment. "But why?" I asked laughingly. "The dressing-table is not a sacred object, even to a woman. Why treat it with such veneration? Where there is but one good light, and that immediately in front of the window, there is every excuse for the British custom, but when the light is well diffused, why not place the table wherever it looks well?"
Ah, but it doesn't look well anywhere but back to the window, said Mr. Anstruther artlessly. "It belongs there, you see; it has probably been there since the time of Malcolm Canmore, unless Margaret was too pious to look in a mirror. With your national love of change, you cannot conceive how soothing it is to know that whenever you enter your gate and glance upward, you will always see the curtains parted, and between them, like an idol in a shrine, the ugly wooden back of a little oval or oblong looking-glass. It gives one a sense of permanence in a world where all is fleeting."
The public interest in our doings seems to be entirely of a friendly nature, and if our neighbors find a hundredth part of the charm and novelty in us that we find in them, they are fortunate indeed, and we cheerfully sacrifice our privacy on the altar of the public good.
A village in Scotland is the only place I can fancy where housekeeping becomes an enthralling occupation. All drudgery disappears in a rosy glow of unexpected, unique, and stimulating conditions. I would rather superintend Miss Grieve and cause the light of amazement to gleam ten times daily in her humid eye, than lead a cotillion with Willie Beresford. I would rather do the marketing for our humble breakfasts and teas, or talk over the day's luncheons and dinners with Mistress Brodie of the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, than go to the opera.
Salemina and Francesca do not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me irresponsible and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my galoshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real, and if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke of Wellington said, "When fair in Scotland, always carry an umbrella; when it rains, please yourself," and I sometimes agree with Stevenson's shivering statement, "Life does not seem to me to be an amusement adapted to this climate." I quoted this to the doctor yesterday, but he remarked with some surprise that he had not missed a day's golfing for weeks. The chemist observed as he handed me a cake of soap, "Won'erful blest in weather, we are, mam," simply because, the rain being unaccompanied with high wind, one was enabled to hold up an umbrella without having it turned inside out. When it ceased dripping for an hour at noon, the greengrocer said cheerily, "Another grand day, mam!" I assented, though I could not for the life of me remember when the last one occurred. However, dreary as the weather may be, one cannot be dull when doing one's morning round of shopping in Pettybaw or Strathdee. I have only to give you thumb-nail sketches of our favorite tradespeople to convince you of that fact.
* * * * *
We bought our first groceries of Mrs. Robert Phin, of Strathdee, simply because she is an inimitable conversationalist. She is expansive, too, about family matters, and tells us certain of her "mon's" faults which it would be more seemly to keep in the safe shelter of her own bosom.
Rab takes a wee drappie too much, it appears, and takes it so often that he has little time to earn an honest penny for his family. This is bad enough; but the fact that Mrs. Phin has been twice wed before, and that in each case she innocently chose a ne'er-do-weel for a mate, makes her a trifle cynical. She told me that she had laid twa husbands in the kirkyard near which her little shop stands, and added cheerfully, as I made some sympathetic response, "An' I hope it'll no be lang afore I box Rab!"
Salemina objects to the shop because it is so disorderly. Soap and sugar, tea and bloaters, starch and gingham, lead pencils and sausages, lie side by side cosily. Boxes of pins are kept on top of kegs of herrings. Tins of coffee are distributed impartially anywhere and everywhere, and the bacon sometimes reposes in a glass case with small wares and findings, out of the reach of Alexander's dogs.
Alexander is one of a brood, or perhaps I should say three broods, of children which wander among the barrels and boxes and hams and winseys seeking what they may devour,--a handful of sugar, a prune, or a sweetie.
We often see the bairns at their luncheon or dinner in a little room just off the shop, Alexander the Small always sitting or kneeling on a "creepie," holding his plate down firmly with the left hand and eating with the right, whether the food be fish, porridge, or broth. In the Phin family the person who does not hold his plate down runs the risk of losing it to one of the other children or to the dogs, who, with eager eye and reminding paw, gather round the hospitable board, licking their chops hopefully.
I enjoy these scenes very much, but alas, I can no longer witness them as often as formerly.
This morning Mrs. Phin greeted me with some embarrassment.
Maybe ye'll no ken me, she said, her usually clear speech a little blurred. "It's the teeth. I've mislaid 'em somewhere. I paid far too much siller for 'em to wear 'em ilka day. Sometimes I rest 'em in the tea-box to keep 'em awa' frae the bairns, but I canna find 'em theer. I'm thinkin' maybe they'll be in the rice, but I've been ower thrang to luik!"
This anecdote was too rich to keep to myself, but its unconscious humor made no impression upon Salemina, who insisted upon the withdrawal of our patronage. I have tried to persuade her that, whatever may be said of tea and rice, we run no risk in buying eggs; but she is relentless.
* * * * *
The kirkyard where Rab's two predecessors have been laid, and where Rab will lie when Mrs. Phin has "boxed" him, is a sleepy little place set on a gentle slope of ground, softly shaded by willow and yew trees. It is inclosed by a stone wall, into which an occasional ancient tombstone is built, its name and date almost obliterated by stress of time and weather.
We often walk through its quiet, myrtle-bordered paths on our way to the other end of the village, where Mrs. Bruce, the flesher, keeps an unrivaled assortment of beef and mutton. The headstones, many of them laid flat upon the graves, are interesting to us because of their quaint inscriptions, in which the occupation of the deceased is often stated with modest pride and candor. One expects to see the achievements of the soldier, the sailor, or the statesman carved in the stone that marks his resting-place, but to our eyes it is strange enough to read that the subject of eulogy was a plumber, tobacconist, maker of golf-balls, or a golf champion; in which latter case there is a spirited etching or bas-relief of the dead hero, with knickerbockers, cap, and clubs complete.
There, too, lies Thomas Loughead, Hairdresser, a profession far too little celebrated in song and story. His stone is a simple one and bears merely the touching tribute:--
He was lovely and pleasant in his life,
the inference being to one who knows a line of Scripture, that in his death he was not divided.
These kirkyard personalities almost lead one to believe in the authenticity of the British tradesman's epitaph, wherein his practical-minded relict stated that the "bereaved widow would continue to carry on the tripe and trotter business at the old stand."
* * * * *
One day when we were walking through the little village of Strathdee we turned the corner of a quiet side street and came suddenly upon something altogether strange and unexpected.
A stone cottage of the every-day sort stood a little back from the road and bore over its front door a sign announcing that Mrs. Bruce, Flesher, carried on her business within; and indeed one could look through the windows and see ruddy joints hanging from beams, and piles of pink and white steaks and chops lying neatly on the counter, crying, "Come, eat me!" Nevertheless, one's first glance would be arrested neither by Mrs. Bruce's black-and-gold sign, nor by the enticements of her stock in trade, because one's attention is knocked squarely between the eyes by an astonishing shape that arises from the patch of lawn in front of the cottage, and completely dominates the scene. Imagine yourself face to face with the last thing you would expect to see in a modest front dooryard,--the figurehead of a ship, heroic in size, gorgeous in color, majestic in pose! A female personage it appears to be from the drapery, which is the only key the artist furnishes as to sex, and a queenly female withal, for she wears a crown at least a foot high, and brandishes a forbidding sceptre. All this is seen from the front, but the rear view discloses the fact that the lady terminates in the tail of a fish which wriggles artistically in mid-air and is of a brittle sort, as it has evidently been thrice broken and glued together.
Mrs. Bruce did not leave us long in suspense, but obligingly came out, partly to comment on the low price of mutton and partly to tell the tale of the mammoth mermaid. By rights, of course, Mrs. Bruce's husband should have been the gallant captain of a bark which foundered at sea and sent every man to his grave on the ocean bed. The ship's figurehead should have been discovered by some miracle, brought to the sorrowing widow, and set up in the garden in eternal remembrance of the dear departed. This was the story in my mind, but as a matter of fact the rude effigy was wrought by Mrs. Bruce's father for a ship to be called the Sea Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea Queen and buy chops out of courtesy and gratitude.
* * * * *
On our way to the bakery, which is a daily walk with us, we always glance at a little cot in a grassy lane just off the fore street. In one half of this humble dwelling Mrs. Davidson keeps a slender stock of shop-worn articles,--pins, needles, threads, sealing-wax, pencils, and sweeties for the children, all disposed attractively upon a single shelf behind the window.
Across the passage, close to the other window, sits day after day an old woman of eighty-six summers who has lost her kinship with the present and gone back to dwell forever in the past. A small table stands in front of her rush-bottomed chair, the old family Bible rests on it, and in front of the Bible are always four tiny dolls, with which the trembling old fingers play from morning till night. They are cheap, common little puppets, but she robes and disrobes them with tenderest care. They are put to bed upon the Bible, take their walks along its time-worn pages, are married on it, buried on it, and the direst punishment they ever receive is to be removed from its sacred covers and temporarily hidden beneath the dear old soul's black alpaca apron. She is quite happy with her treasures on week days; but on Sundays--alas and alas! the poor old dame sits in her lonely chair with the furtive tears dropping on her wrinkled cheeks, for it is a God-fearing household, and it is neither lawful nor seemly to play with dolls on the Sawbath!
* * * * *
Mrs. Nicolson is the presiding genius of the bakery; she is more--she is the bakery itself. A Mr. Nicolson there is, and he is known to be the baker, but he dwells in the regions below the shop and only issues at rare intervals, beneath the friendly shelter of a huge tin tray filled with scones and baps.
If you saw Mrs. Nicolson's kitchen with the firelight gleaming on its bright copper, its polished candlesticks, and its snowy floor, you would think her an admirable housewife, but you would get no clue to those shrewd and masterful traits of character which reveal themselves chiefly behind the counter.
Miss Grieve had purchased of Mrs. Nicolson a quarter section of very appetizing ginger cake to eat with our afternoon tea, and I stopped in to buy more. She showed me a large, round loaf for two shillings.
No, I objected, "I cannot use a whole loaf, thank you. We eat very little at a time and like it perfectly fresh. I wish a small piece such as my maid bought the other day."
Then ensued a discourse which I cannot render in the vernacular, more's the pity, though I understood it all too well for my comfort. The substance of it was this: that she couldna and wouldna tak' it in hand to give me a quarter section of cake when the other three quarters might gae dry in the bakery; that the reason she sold the small piece on the former occasion was that her daughter, her son-in-law, and their three children came from Ballahoolish to visit her, and she gave them a high tea with no expense spared; that at this function they devoured three fourths of a ginger cake, and just as she was mournfully regarding the remainder my servant came in and took it off her hands; that she had kept a bakery for thirty years and her mother before her, and never had a two-shilling ginger cake been sold in pieces before, nor was it likely ever to occur again; that if I, under Providence so to speak, had been the fortunate gainer by the transaction, why not eat my six-pennyworth in solemn gratitude once for all, and not expect a like miracle to happen the next week? And finally, that two-shilling ginger cakes were, in the very nature of things, designed for large families; and it was the part of wisdom for small families to fix their affections on something else, for she couldna and wouldna tak' it in hand to cut a rare and expensive article for a small customer.
The torrent of logic was over, and I said humbly that I would take the whole loaf.
Verra weel, mam, she responded more affably, "thank you kindly; no, I couldna tak' it in hand to sell six pennyworth of that ginger cake and let one and sixpence worth gae dry in the bakery--A beautiful day, mam! Won'erful blest in weather ye are! Let me open your umbrella for you, mam!"
* * * * *
David Robb is the weaver of Pettybaw. All day long he sits at his old-fashioned hand-loom, which, like the fruit of his toil and the dear old graybeard himself, belongs to a day that is past and gone.
He might have work enough to keep an apprentice busy, but where would he find a lad sufficiently behind the times to learn a humble trade now banished to the limbo of superseded, almost forgotten things?
His home is but a poor place, but the rough room in which he works is big enough to hold a deal of sweet content. It is cheery enough, too, to attract the Pettybaw weans, who steal in on wet days and sit on the floor playing with the thrums, or with bits of colored ravelings. Sometimes when they have proved themselves wise and prudent little virgins, they are even allowed to touch the hanks of pink and yellow and blue yarn that lie in rainbow-hued confusion on the long deal table.
All this time the "heddles" go up and down, up and down, with their ceaseless clatter, and David throws the shuttle back and forth as he weaves his old-fashioned winseys.
We have grown to be good friends, David and I, and I have been permitted the signal honor of painting him at his work.
The loom stands by an eastern window, and the rare Pettybaw sunshine filters through the branches of a tree, shines upon the dusty window-panes, and throws a halo round David's head that he well deserves and little suspects. In my foreground sit Meg and Jean and Elspeth playing with thrums and wearing the fruit of David's loom in their gingham frocks. David himself sits on his wooden bench behind the maze of cords that form the "loom harness."
The snows of seventy winters powder his hair and beard. His spectacles are often pushed back on his kindly brow, but no glass could wholly obscure the clear integrity and steadfast purity of his eyes; and as for his smile I have not the art to paint that! It holds in solution so many sweet though humble virtues of patience, temperance, self-denial, honest endeavor, that my brush falters in the attempt to fix the radiant whole upon the canvas. Fashions come and go, modern improvements transform the arts and trades, manual skill gives way to the cunning of the machine, but old David Robb, after more than fifty years of toil, still sits at his hand-loom and weaves his winseys for the Pettybaw bairnies.
David has small book-learning, so he tells me; and indeed he had need to tell me, for I should never have discovered it myself,--one misses it so little when the larger things are all present!
A certain summer visitor in Pettybaw (a compatriot of ours, by the way) bought a quantity of David's orange-colored winsey, and finding that it wore like iron, wished to order more. She used the word "reproduce" in her telegram, as there was one pattern and one color she specially liked. Perhaps the context was not illuminating, but at any rate the word "reproduce" was not in David's vocabulary, and putting back his spectacles he told me his difficulty in deciphering the exact meaning of his fine-lady patron. He called at the Free kirk manse,--the meenister was no at hame; then to the library,--it was closed; then to the Established manse,--the meenister was awa'. At last he obtained a glance at the schoolmaster's dictionary, and turning to "reproduce" found that it meant "_naught but mak' ower again;_"--and with an amused smile at the bedevilments of language he turned once more to his loom and I to my canvas.
Notwithstanding his unfamiliarity with lang-nebbit words, David has absorbed a deal of wisdom in his quiet life; though so far as I can see, his only books have been the green tree outside his window, a glimpse of the distant ocean, and the toil of his hands.
But I sometimes question if as many scholars are not made as marred in this wise, for,--to the seeing eye,--the waving leaf and the far sea, the daily task, one's own heart-beats, and one's neighbor's,--these teach us in good time to interpret Nature's secrets, and man's, and God's as well.
The knights they harpit in their bow'r, The ladyes sew'd and sang; The mirth that was in that chamber Through all the place it rang.
"Rose the Red and White Lily.
Tea at Rowardennan Castle is an impressive and a delightful function. It is served by a ministerial-looking butler and a just-ready-to-be-ordained footman. They both look as if they had been nourished on the Thirty-Nine Articles, but they know their business as well as if they had been trained in heathen lands,--which is saying a good deal, for everybody knows that heathen servants wait upon one with idolatrous solicitude. However, from the quality of the cheering beverage itself down to the thickness of the cream, the thinness of the china, the crispness of the toast, and the plummyness of the cake, tea at Rowardennan Castle is perfect in every detail.
The scones are of unusual lightness, also. I should think they would scarcely weigh more than four, perhaps even five, to a pound; but I am aware that the casual traveler, who eats only at hotels, and never has the privilege of entering feudal castles, will be slow to believe this estimate, particularly just after breakfast.
Salemina always describes a Scotch scone as an aspiring but unsuccessful soda biscuit of the New England sort. Stevenson, in writing of that dense black substance, inimical to life, called Scotch bun, says that the patriotism that leads a Scotsman to eat it will hardly desert him in any emergency. Salemina thinks that the scone should be bracketed with the bun (in description, of course, never in the human stomach), and says that, as a matter of fact, "th' unconquer'd Scot" of old was not only clad in a shirt of mail, but well fortified within when he went forth to warfare after a meal of oatmeal and scones. She insists that the spear which would pierce the shirt of mail would be turned aside and blunted by the ordinary scone of commerce; but what signifies the opinion of a woman who eats sugar on her porridge?
Considering the air of liberal hospitality that hangs about the castle tea-table, I wonder that our friends do not oftener avail themselves of its privileges and allow us to do so; but on all dark, foggy, or inclement days, or whenever they tire of the sands, everybody persists in taking tea at Bide-a-Wee Cottage.
We buy our tea of the Pettybaw grocer, some of our cups are cracked, the teapot is of earthenware, Miss Grieve disapproves of all social tea-fuddles and shows it plainly when she brings in the tray, and the room is so small that some of us overflow into the hall or the garden; it matters not; there is some fatal charm in our humble hospitality. At four o'clock one of us is obliged to be, like Sister Anne, on the housetop; and if company approaches, she must descend and speed to the plumber's for sixpenny worth extra of cream. In most well-ordered British households Miss Grieve would be requested to do this speeding, but both her mind and her body move too slowly for such domestic crises; and then, too, her temper has to be kept as unruffled as possible, so that she will cut the bread and butter thin. This she generally does if she has not been "fair doun-hadden wi' wark;" but the washing of her own spinster cup and plate, together with the incident sighs and groans, occupies her till so late an hour that she is not always dressed for callers.
Willie and I were reading "The Lady of the Lake," the other day, in the back garden, surrounded by the verdant leafage of our own kail-yard. It is a pretty spot when the sun shines, a trifle domestic in its air, perhaps, but restful: Miss Grieve's dish-towels and aprons drying on the currant bushes, the cat playing with a mutton-bone or a fishtail on the grass, and the little birds perching on the rims of our wash-boiler and water-buckets. It can be reached only by way of the kitchen, which somewhat lessens its value as a pleasure-ground or a rustic retreat, but Willie and I retire there now and then for a quiet chat.
On this particular occasion Willie was declaiming the exciting verses where FitzJames and Murdoch are crossing the stream
That joins Loch Katrine to Achray,
where the crazed Blanche of Devan first appears:--
"All in the Trosachs' glen was still, Noontide was sleeping on the hill: Sudden his guide whoop'd loud and high-- 'Murdoch! was that a signal cry?'
"It was indeed, said Francesca, appearing suddenly at an upper window overhanging the garden. "Pardon this intrusion, but the castle people are here," she continued in what is known as a stage whisper,--that is, one that can be easily heard by a thousand persons,--"the castle people and the ladies from Pettybaw House; and Mr. Macdonald is coming down the loaning; but Calamity Jane is making her toilette in the kitchen, and you cannot take Mr. Beresford through into the sitting-room at present. She says this hoose has so few conveniences that it's 'fair sickenin'.'"
How long will she be? queried Mr. Beresford anxiously, putting "The Lady of the Lake" in his pocket, and pacing up and down between the rows of cabbages.
She has just begun. Whatever you do, don't unsettle her temper, for she will have to prepare for eight to-day. I will send Mr. Macdonald and Miss Macrae to the bakery for gingerbread, to gain time, and possibly I can think of a way to rescue you. If I can't, are you tolerably comfortable? Perhaps Miss Grieve won't mind Penelope, and she can come through the kitchen any time and join us; but naturally you don't want to be separated, that's the worst of being engaged. Of course I can lower your tea in a tin bucket, and if it should rain I can throw out umbrellas. Would you like your golf-cape, Pen? 'Won'erful blest in weather ye are, mam!' The situation is not so bad as it might be, she added consolingly, "because in case Miss Grieve's toilette should last longer than usual, your wedding need not be indefinitely postponed, for Mr. Macdonald can marry you from this window."
Here she disappeared, and we had scarcely time to take in the full humor of the affair before Robin Anstruther's laughing eyes appeared over the top of the high brick wall that protects our garden on three sides.
Do not shoot, said he. "I am not come to steal the fruit, but to succor humanity in distress. Miss Monroe insisted that I should borrow the inn ladder. She thought a rescue would be much more romantic than waiting for Miss Grieve. Everybody is coming out to witness it, at least all your guests,--there are no strangers present,--and Miss Monroe is already collecting sixpence a head for the entertainment, to be given, she says, to Mr. Macdonald's sustentation fund."
He was now astride of the wall, and speedily lifted the ladder to our side, where it leaned comfortably against the stout branches of the draper's peach vine. Willie ran nimbly up the ladder and bestrode the wall. I followed, first standing, and then decorously sitting down on the top of it. Mr. Anstruther pulled up the ladder, and replaced it on the side of liberty; then he descended, then Willie, and I last of all, amidst the acclamations of the on-lookers, a select company of six or eight persons.
When Miss Grieve formally entered the sitting-room bearing the tea-tray, she was buskit braw in black stuff gown, clean apron, and fresh cap trimmed with purple ribbons, under which her white locks were neatly dressed.
She deplored the coolness of the tea, but accounted for it to me in an aside by the sickening quality of Mrs. Sinkler's coals and Mr. Macbrose's kindling-wood, to say nothing of the insulting draft in the draper's range. When she left the room, I suppose she was unable to explain the peals of laughter that rang through our circumscribed halls.
Lady Ardmore insists that the rescue was the most unique episode she ever witnessed, and says that she never understood America until she made our acquaintance. I persuaded her that this was fallacious reasoning; that while she might understand us by knowing America, she could not possibly reverse this mental operation and be sure of the result. The ladies of Pettybaw House said that the occurrence was as Fifish as anything that ever happened in Fife. The kingdom of Fife is noted, it seems, for its "doocots and its daft lairds," and to be eccentric and Fifish are one and the same thing. Thereupon Francesca told Mr. Macdonald a story she heard in Edinburgh, to the effect that when a certain committee or council was quarreling as to which of certain Fifeshire towns should be the seat of a projected lunatic asylum, a new resident arose and suggested that the building of a wall round the kingdom of Fife would solve the difficulty, settle all disputes, and give sufficient room for the lunatics to exercise properly.
This is the sort of tale that a native can tell with a genial chuckle, but it comes with poor grace from an American lady sojourning in Fife. Francesca does not mind this, however, as she is at present avenging fresh insults to her own beloved country.