‘He thought he saw a buffaloUpon the chimney-piece;He looked again and found it wasHis 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 macintosh 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, although 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 grey 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 fairAn’ Willie’s wondrous bonny;An’ Willie’s hecht to marry meGin 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 largest bath. We bought housekeeping stores, distributing our patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and dust-cloths 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, “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, although 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 for ever 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, ‘especially 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 carolled impersonally—
“Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,And leave my love behind me?Why did I venture to the northWith one that did not mind me?I’m sure I’ve seen a better limbAnd twenty better faces;But still my mind it runs on himWhen 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 grotesque 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, “although she may possibly be somebody’s grand-aunt. 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 you 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 she cannot be looked upon as a national type. Everywhere we go we see fresh, fair-haired, sonsie lasses; why should we have been visited by 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 that 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 kensNae second spring again!’
She. “There’s no’ eneuch jugs i’ the hoose.”
We. ‘I’m downright dizzy wi’ the thought—In troth I’m like to greet!’
She. “The sink drain isna 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 OWaukin 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’ 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 nae ither!); 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 cosy 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, grey, 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 (although 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 further. 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 labours 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 grey 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, 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, although 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 invested 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 sitWi’ their face into their hand,Before they see Sir Patrick SpensCome 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 towards 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 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 practise 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 skipperTo 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 sailorThat ever sailed the sea.”’
“Now I’ll write my letter,” said the king, who was endeavouring to make himself comfortable in his somewhat contracted tower.
‘The King has written a braid letterAnd 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 o’er the faem!The King’s daughter of Noroway,‘Tis 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 Patrick 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 done 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 craft. 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 you lee!“For I brocht as much white monieAs gane my men and me,An’ I brocht a half-fou o’ gude red gowdOut ower the sea wi’ me.“But betide me well, 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—