‘A’ doun alang the CanongateWere beaux o’ ilk degree;And mony ane turned round to lookAt bonny Mally Lee.And we’re a’ gaun east an’ west,We’re a’ gaun agee,We’re a’ gaun east an’ westCourtin’ 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 M’Allister. 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 colour 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 that 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-practised 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-coloured 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 or 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 tortoise-shell 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 defenceless majesty; scanned meanwhile by the maids of honour (who if they were truly honourable, 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 all 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, other 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 colour 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 neighbour 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 despatched 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 trinket or bit of frippery 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 humour 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. “And 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-bye 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 grey 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 grey 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 vigour 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 owre 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.
‘Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’,Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’,We’ll up an’ gie them a blaw, a blaw,Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’!’
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, hesitating outside the door for sheer delight, 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’ Hazeldean’ 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 noo 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 for ever thus!’ You bathed your spirit in sunshine and colour; 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 nought 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 flavour 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 braidsword, 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’ againTo 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 favour 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 M’Vicar 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. M’Vicar 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 favoured 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 colour 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, whisky, 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 blethers 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 GIRL’S FAREWELL TO EDINBURGHThe muse being somewhat under the influence of the Scottish balladI canna thole my ain toun,Sin’ I hae dwelt i’ this;To bide in Edinboro’ reekWad 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 ‘Staiblished, 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 marmaladeAn’ 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 philabegOr 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 folk o’ Fife are dear,—Sae dear are ane an’ a’,That e’en to think that we maun pairtMaist 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 lugsM’Kinley’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’ll fight!An’ (whiles) I’d fight for a’ that’s Scotch,Save whusky 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, and would never be worn with a kilt!’
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 for ever 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 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 lat a puir bodyGang aboot his business.’
‘Now she’s cast aff her bonny shoonMade o’ gilded leather,And she’s put on her Hieland broguesTo skip amang the heather.And she’s cast aff her bonny goonMade o’ the silk and satin,And she’s put on a tartan plaidTo 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 travelled 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; Winnybrae 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’ Fairlock’ (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 cudna 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 enamoured, 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 curved spire from the green trees, the manse next door was hidden in vines, the sheep lay close to the grey stone walls and the young lambs nestled 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 innkeeper’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—although 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 winceys, 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 favourably, 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 hearth-stone 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 cudna 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 despatched 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 we desired. The relationship was an interesting fact, though we scarcely thought the information worth the additional pennies 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 Callander for Francesca, and despatched 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 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:—