‘The knights they harpit in their bow’r,The ladyes sew’d and sang;The mirth that was in that chamberThrough 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 traveller, 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 six pennyworth 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 kale-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 fish-tail 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 Fitz-James 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 toilet 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-caps, 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 toilet 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 humour 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 succour 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, for your dear Friar’s sustenation 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 onlookers, 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 [dovecots] 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 quarrelling 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.
With mimic din of stroke and wardThe broadsword upon target jarr’d.
The Lady of the Lake.
Robin Anstruther was telling stories at the tea-table.
“I got acquainted with an American girl in rather a queer sort of way,” he said, between cups. “It was in London, on the Duke of York’s wedding-day. I’m rather a tall chap, you see, and in the crowd somebody touched me on the shoulder, and a plaintive voice behind me said, ‘You’re such a big man, and I am so little, will you please help me to save my life? My mother was separated from me in the crowd somewhere as we were trying to reach the Berkeley, and I don’t know what to do.’ I was a trifle nonplussed, but I did the best I could. She was a tiny thing, in a marvellous frock and a flowery hat and a silver girdle and chatelaine. In another minute she spied a second man, an officer, a full head taller than I am, broad shoulders, splendidly put up altogether. Bless me! if she didn’t turn to him and say, ‘Oh, you’re so nice and big, you’re even bigger than this other gentleman, and I need you both in this dreadful crush. If you’ll be good enough to stand on either side of me, I shall be awfully obliged.’ We exchanged amused glances of embarrassment over her blonde head, but there was no resisting the irresistible. She was a small person, but she had the soul of a general, and we obeyed orders. We stood guard over her little ladyship for nearly an hour, and I must say she entertained us thoroughly, for she was as clever as she was pretty. Then I got her a seat in one of the windows of my club, while the other man, armed with a full description, went out to hunt up the mother; and, by Jove! he found her, too. She would have her mother, and her mother she had. They were awfully jolly people; they came to luncheon in my chambers at the Albany afterwards, and we grew to be great friends.”
“I dare say she was an English girl masquerading,” I remarked facetiously. “What made you think her an American?”
“Oh, her general appearance and accent, I suppose.”
“Probably she didn’t say Barkley,” observed Francesca cuttingly; “she would have been sure to commit that sort of solecism.”
“Why, don’t you say Barkley in the States?”
“Certainly not; we never call them the States, and with us c-l-e-r-k spells clerk, and B-e-r-k Berk.”
“How very odd!” remarked Mr. Anstruther.
“No odder than you saying Bark, and not half as odd as your calling it Albany,” I interpolated, to help Francesca.
“Quite so,” said Mr. Anstruther; “but how do you say Albany in America?”
“Penelope and I always call it Allbany,” responded Francesca nonsensically, “but Salemina, who has been much in England, always calls it Albany.”
This anecdote was the signal for Miss Ardmore to remark (apropos of her own discrimination and the American accent) that hearing a lady ask for a certain med’cine in a chemist’s shop, she noted the intonation, and inquired of the chemist, when the fair stranger had retired, if she were not an American. “And she was!” exclaimed the Honourable Elizabeth triumphantly. “And what makes it the more curious, she had been over here twenty years, and of course, spoke English quite properly.”
In avenging fancied insults, it is certainly more just to heap punishment on the head of the real offender than upon his neighbour, and it is a trifle difficult to decide why Francesca should chastise Mr. Macdonald for the good-humoured sins of Mr. Anstruther and Miss Ardmore; yet she does so, nevertheless.
The history of these chastisements she recounts in the nightly half-hour which she spends with me when I am endeavouring to compose myself for sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of my bed she becomes eloquent!
“It all began with his saying—”
This is her perennial introduction, and I respond as invariably, “What began?”
“Oh, to-day’s argument with Mr. Macdonald. It was a literary quarrel this afternoon.”
“‘Fools rush in—‘” I quoted.
“There is a good deal of nonsense in that old saw,” she interrupted; “at all events, the most foolish fools I have ever known stayed still and didn’t do anything. Rushing shows a certain movement of the mind, even if it is in the wrong direction. However, Mr. Macdonald is both opinionated and dogmatic, but his worst enemy could never call him a fool.”
“I didn’t allude to Mr. Macdonald.”
“Don’t you suppose I know to whom you alluded, dear? Is not your style so simple, frank, and direct that a wayfaring girl can read it and not err therein? No, I am not sitting on your feet, and it is not time to go to sleep; I wonder you do not tire of making those futile protests. As a matter of fact, we began this literary discussion yesterday morning, but were interrupted; and knowing that it was sure to come up again, I prepared for it with Salemina. She furnished the ammunition, so to speak, and I fired the guns.”
“You always make so much noise with blank cartridges I wonder you ever bother about real shot,” I remarked.
“Penelope, how can you abuse me when I am in trouble? Well, Mr. Macdonald was prating, as usual, about the antiquity of Scotland and its aeons of stirring history. I am so weary of the venerableness of this country. How old will it have to be, I wonder, before it gets used to it? If it’s the province of art to conceal art, it ought to be the province of age to conceal age, and it generally is. ‘Everything doesn’t improve with years,’ I observed sententiously.
“‘For instance?’ he inquired.
“Of course you know how that question affected me! How I do dislike an appetite for specific details! It is simply paralysing to a good conversation. Do you remember that silly game in which some one points a stick at you and says, ‘Beast, bird, or fish,—BEAST!’ and you have to name one while he counts ten? If a beast has been requested, you can think of one fish and two birds, but no beast. If he says ‘FISH,’ all the beasts in the universe stalk through your memory, but not one finny, sealy, swimming thing! Well, that is the effect of ‘For instance?’ on my faculties. So I stumbled a bit, and succeeded in recalling, as objects which do not improve with age, mushrooms, women, and chickens, and he was obliged to agree with me, which nearly killed him. Then I said that although America is so fresh and blooming that people persist in calling it young, it is much older than it appears to the superficial eye. There is no real propriety in dating us as a nation from the Declaration of Independence in 1776, I said, nor even from the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620; nor, for that matter, from Columbus’s discovery in 1492. It’s my opinion, I asserted, that some of us had been there thousands of years before, but nobody had had the sense to discover us. We couldn’t discover ourselves,—though if we could have foreseen how the sere and yellow nations of the earth would taunt us with youth and inexperience, we should have had to do something desperate!”
“That theory must have been very convincing to the philosophic Scots mind,” I interjected.
“It was; even Mr. Macdonald thought it ingenious. ‘And so,’ I went on, ‘we were alive and awake and beginning to make history when you Scots were only bare-legged savages roaming over the hills and stealing cattle. It was a very bad habit of yours, that cattle-stealing, and one which you kept up too long.’
“‘No worse a sin than your stealing land from the Indians,’ he said.
“‘Oh yes,’ I answered, ‘because it was a smaller one! Yours was a vice, and ours a sin; or I mean it would have been a sin had we done it; but in reality we didn’t steal land; we just TOOK it, reserving plenty for the Indians to play about on; and for every hunting-ground we took away we gave them in exchange a serviceable plough, or a school, or a nice Indian agent, or something. That was land-grabbing, if you like, but it is a habit you Britishers have still, while we gave it up when we reached years of discretion.’”
“This is very illuminating,” I interrupted, now thoroughly wide awake, “but it isn’t my idea of a literary discussion.”
“I am coming to that,” she responded. “It was just at this point that, goaded into secret fury by my innocent speech about cattle-stealing, he began to belittle American literature, the poetry especially. Of course he waxed eloquent about the royal line of poet-kings that had made his country famous, and said the people who could claim Shakespeare had reason to be the proudest nation on earth. ‘Doubtless,’ I said. ‘But do you mean to say that Scotland has any nearer claim upon Shakespeare than we have? I do not now allude to the fact that in the large sense he is the common property of the English-speaking world’ (Salemina told me to say that), ‘but Shakespeare died in 1616, and the union of Scotland with England didn’t come about till 1707, nearly a century afterwards. You really haven’t anything to do with him! But as for us, we didn’t leave England until 1620, when Shakespeare had been perfectly dead four years. We took very good care not to come away too soon. Chaucer and Spenser were dead too, and we had nothing to stay for!’”
I was obliged to relax here and give vent to a burst of merriment at Francesca’s absurdities.
“I could see that he had never regarded the matter in that light before,” she went on gaily, encouraged by my laughter, “but he braced himself for the conflict, and said ‘I wonder that you didn’t stay a little longer while you were about it. Milton and Ben Jonson were still alive; Bacon’s Novum Organum was just coming out; and in thirty or forty years you could have had L’Allegro, Il Penseroso and Paradise Lost; Newton’s Principia, too, in 1687. Perhaps these were all too serious and heavy for your national taste; still one sometimes likes to claim things one cannot fully appreciate. And then, too, if you had once begun to stay, waiting for the great things to happen and the great books to be written, you would never have gone, for there would still have been Browning, Tennyson, and Swinburne to delay you.’
“‘If we couldn’t stay to see out your great bards, we certainly couldn’t afford to remain and welcome your minor ones,’ I answered frigidly; ‘but we wanted to be well out of the way before England united with Scotland, knowing that if we were uncomfortable as things were, it would be a good deal worse after the Union; and we had to come home anyway, and start our own poets. Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell had to be born.’
“‘I suppose they had to be if you had set your mind on it,’ he said, ‘though personally I could have spared one or two on that roll of honour.’
“‘Very probably,’ I remarked, as thoroughly angry now as he intended I should be. ‘We cannot expect you to appreciate all the American poets; indeed, you cannot appreciate all of your own, for the same nation doesn’t always furnish the writers and the readers. Take your precious Browning, for example! There are hundreds of Browning Clubs in America, and I never heard of a single one in Scotland.’
“‘No,’ he retorted, ‘I dare say; but there is a good deal in belonging to a people who can understand him without clubs!’”
“O Francesca!” I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright among my pillows. “How could you give him that chance! How COULD you! What did you say?”
“I said nothing,” she replied mysteriously. “I did something much more to the point,—I cried!”
“CRIED?”
“Yes, cried; not rivers and freshets of woe, but small brooks and streamlets of helpless mortification.”
“What did he do then?”
“Why do you say ‘do’?”
“Oh, I mean ‘say,’ of course. Don’t trifle; go on. What did he say then?”
“There are some things too dreadful to describe,” she answered, and wrapping her Italian blanket majestically about her she retired to her own apartment, shooting one enigmatical glance at me as she closed the door.
That glance puzzled me for some time after she left the room. It was as expressive and interesting a beam as ever darted from a woman’s eye. The combination of elements involved in it, if an abstract thing may be conceived as existing in component parts, was something like this:—
One-half, mystery. One-eighth, triumph. One-eighth, amusement. One-sixteenth, pride. One-sixteenth, shame. One-sixteenth, desire to confess. One-sixteenth, determination to conceal.
And all these delicate, complex emotions played together in a circle of arching eyebrow, curving lip, and tremulous chin,—played together, mingling and melting into one another like fire and snow; bewildering, mystifying, enchanting the beholder!
If Ronald Macdonald did—I am a woman, but, for one, I can hardly blame him!
‘“O has he chosen a bonny bride,An’ has he clean forgotten me?”An’ sighing said that gay ladye,“I would I were in my ain countrie!”’
Lord Beichan.
It rained in torrents; Salemina was darning stockings in the inglenook at Bide-a-Wee Cottage, and I was reading her a Scotch letter which Francesca and I had concocted the evening before. I proposed sending the document to certain chosen spirits in our own country, who were pleased to be facetious concerning our devotion to Scotland. It contained, in sooth, little that was new, and still less that was true, for we were confined to a very small vocabulary which we were obliged to supplement now and then by a dip into Burns and Allan Ramsay.
Here is the letter:—
Bide-a-Wee Cottage, Pettybaw, East Neuk o’ Fife.
To my trusty fieres,
Mony’s the time I hae ettled to send ye a screed, but there was aye something that cam’ i’ the gait. It wisna that I couldna be fashed, for aften hae I thocht o’ ye and my hairt has been wi’ ye mony’s the day. There’s no’ muckle fowk frae Ameriky hereawa; they’re a’ jist Fife bodies, and a lass canna get her tongue roun’ their thrapple-taxin’ words ava’, so it’s like I may een drap a’ the sweetness o’ my good mither-tongue.
‘Tis a dulefu’ nicht, and an awfu’ blash is ragin’ wi’oot. Fanny’s awa’ at the gowff rinnin’ aboot wi’ a bag o’ sticks after a wee bit ba’, and Sally and I are hame by oor lane. Laith will the lassie be to weet her bonny shoon, but lang ere the play’ll be ower she’ll wat her hat aboon. A gust o’ win’ is skirlin’ the noo, and as we luik ower the faem, the haar is risin’, weetin’ the green swaird wi’ misty shoo’rs.
Yestreen was a calm simmer gloamin’, sae sweet an’ bonnie that when the sun was sinkin’ doon ower Pettybaw Sands we daundered ower the muir. As we cam’ through the scented birks, we saw a trottin’ burnie wimplin’ ‘neath the white-blossomed slaes and hirplin’ doon the hillside; an’ while a herd-laddie lilted ower the fernie brae, a cushat cooed leesomely doon i’ the dale. We pit aff oor shoon, sae blithe were we, kilted oor coats a little aboon the knee, and paidilt i’ the burn, gettin’ geyan weet the while. Then Sally pu’d the gowans wat wi’ dew an’ twined her bree wi’ tasselled broom, while I had a wee crackie wi’ Tibby Buchan, the flesher’s dochter frae Auld Reekie. Tibby’s nae giglet gawky like the lave, ye ken,—she’s a sonsie maid, as sweet as ony hinny pear, wi’ her twa pawky een an’ her cockernony snooded up fu’ sleek.
We were unco gleg to win hame when a’ this was dune, an’ after steekin’ the door, to sit an’ birsle oor taes at the bit blaze. Mickle thocht we o’ the gentles ayont the sea, an’ sair grat we for a’ frien’s we kent lang syne in oor ain countree.
Late at nicht, Fanny, the bonny gypsy, cam’ ben the hoose an’ tirled at the pin of oor bigly bower door, speirin’ for baps and bannocks.
“Hoots, lassie!” cried oot Sally, “th’ auld carline i’ the kitchen is i’ her box-bed, an’ weel aneuch ye ken is lang syne cuddled doon.”
“Oo ay!” said Fanny, strikin’ her curly pow, “then fetch me parritch, an’ dinna be lang wi’ them, for I’ve lickit a Pettybaw lad at the gowff, an’ I could eat twa guid jints o’ beef gin I had them!”
“Losh girl,” said I, “gie ower makin’ sic a mickle din. Ye ken verra weel ye’ll get nae parritch the nicht. I’ll rin and fetch ye a ‘piece’ to stap awee the soun’.”
“Blethers an’ havers!” cried Fanny, but she blinkit bonnily the while, an’ when the tea was weel maskit, she smoored her wrath an’ stappit her mooth wi’ a bit o’ oaten cake. We aye keep that i’ the hoose, for th’ auld servant-body is geyan bad at the cookin’, an’ she’s sae dour an’ dowie that to speak but till her we daur hardly mint.
In sic divairsions pass the lang simmer days in braid Scotland, but I canna write mair the nicht, for ‘tis the wee sma’ hours ayont the twal’.
Like th’ auld wife’s parrot, ‘we dinna speak muckle, but we’re deevils to think,’ an’ we’re aye thinkin’ aboot ye. An’ noo I maun leave ye to mak’ what ye can oot o’ this, for I jalouse it’ll pass ye to untaukle the whole hypothec.
Fair fa’ ye a’! Lang may yer lum reek, an’ may prosperity attend oor clan!
Aye your gude frien’,
Penelope Hamilton.
“It may be very fine,” remarked Salemina judicially, “though I cannot understand more than half of it.”
“That would also be true of Browning,” I replied. “Don’t you love to see great ideas looming through a mist of words?”
“The words are misty enough in this case,” she said, “and I do wish you would not tell the world that I paddle in the burn, or ‘twine my bree wi’ tasselled broom.’ I’m too old to be made ridiculous.”
“Nobody will believe it,” said Francesca, appearing in the doorway. “They will know it is only Penelope’s havering,” and with this undeserved scoff, she took her mashie and went golfing—not on the links, on this occasion, but in our microscopic sitting-room. It is twelve feet square, and holds a tiny piano, desk, centre-table, sofa, and chairs, but the spot between the fire-place and the table is Francesca’s favourite ‘putting-green.’ She wishes to become more deadly in the matter of approaches, and thinks her tee-shots weak; so these two deficiencies she is trying to make good by home practice in inclement weather. She turns a tumbler on its side on the floor, and ‘putts’ the ball into it, or at it, as the case may be, from the opposite side of the room. It is excellent discipline, and as the tumblers are inexpensive the breakage really does not matter. Whenever Miss Grieve hears the shivering of glass, she murmurs, not without reason, ‘It is not for the knowing what they will be doing next.’
“Penelope, has it ever occurred to you that Elizabeth Ardmore is seriously interested in Mr. Macdonald?”
Salemina propounded this question to me with the same innocence that a babe would display in placing a lighted fuse beside a dynamite bomb.
Francesca naturally heard the remark,—although it was addressed to me,—pricked up her ears, and missed the tumbler by several feet.
It was a simple inquiry, but as I look back upon it from the safe ground of subsequent knowledge I perceive that it had a certain amount of influence upon Francesca’s history. The suggestion would have carried no weight with me for two reasons. In the first place, Salemina is far-sighted. If objects are located at some distance from her, she sees them clearly; but if they are under her very nose she overlooks them altogether, unless they are sufficiently fragrant or audible to address other senses. This physical peculiarity she carries over into her mental processes. Her impression of the Disruption movement, for example, would be lively and distinct, but her perception of a contemporary lover’s quarrel (particularly if it were fought at her own apron-strings) would be singularly vague. If she suggested, therefore, that Elizabeth Ardmore was interested in Mr. Beresford, who is the rightful captive of my bow and spear, I should be perfectly calm.
My second reason for comfortable indifference is that frequently in novels, and always in plays, the heroine is instigated to violent jealousy by insinuations of this sort, usually conveyed by the villain of the piece, male or female. I have seen this happen so often in the modern drama that it has long since ceased to be convincing; but though Francesca has witnessed scores of plays and read hundreds of novels, it did not apparently strike her as a theatrical or literary suggestion that Lady Ardmore’s daughter should be in love with Mr. Macdonald. The effect of the new point of view was most salutary, on the whole. She had come to think herself the only prominent figure in the Reverend Ronald’s landscape, and anything more impertinent than her tone with him (unless it is his with her) I certainly never heard. This criticism, however, relates only to their public performances, and I have long suspected that their private conversations are of a kindlier character. When it occurred to her that he might simply be sharpening his mental sword on her steel, but that his heart had at last wandered into a more genial climate than she had ever provided for it, she softened unconsciously; the Scotsman and the American receded into a truer perspective, and the man and the woman approached each other with dangerous nearness.
“What shall we do if Francesca and Mr. Macdonald really fall in love with each other?” asked Salemina, when Francesca had gone into the hall to try long drives. (There is a good deal of excitement in this, as Miss Grieve has to cross the passage on her way from the kitchen to the china-closet, and thus often serves as a reluctant ‘hazard’ or ‘bunker.’)
“Do you mean what should we have done?” I queried.
“Nonsense, don’t be captious! It can’t be too late yet. They have known each other only a little over two months; when would you have had me interfere, pray?”
“It depends upon what you expect to accomplish. If you wish to stop the marriage, interfere in a fortnight or so; if you wish to prevent an engagement, speak—well, say to-morrow; if, however, you didn’t wish them to fall in love with each other, you should have kept one of them away from Lady Baird’s dinner.”
“I could have waited a trifle longer than that,” argued Salemina, “for you remember how badly they got on at first.”
“I remember you thought so,” I responded dryly; “but I believe Mr. Macdonald has been interested in Francesca from the outset, partly because her beauty and vivacity attracted him, partly because he could keep her in order only by putting his whole mind upon her. On his side, he has succeeded in piquing her into thinking of him continually, though solely, as she fancies, for the purpose of crossing swords with him. If they ever drop their weapons for an instant, and allow the din of warfare to subside so that they can listen to their own heart-beats, they will discover that they love each other to distraction.”
“Ye ken mair than’s in the catecheesm,” remarked Salemina, yawning a little as she put away her darning-ball. “It is pathetic to see you waste your time painting mediocre pictures, when as a lecturer upon love you could instruct your thousands.”
“The thousands would never satisfy me,” I retorted, “so long as you remained uninstructed, for in your single person you would so swell the sum of human ignorance on that subject that my teaching would be for ever in vain.”
“Very clever indeed! Well, what will Mr. Monroe say to me when I return to New York without his daughter, or with his son-in-law?”
“He has never denied Francesca anything in her life; why should he draw the line at a Scotsman? I am much more concerned about Mr. Macdonald’s congregation.”
“I am not anxious about that,” said Salemina loyally. “Francesca would be the life of an Inchcaldy parish.”
“I dare say,” I observed, “but she might be the death of the pastor.”
“I am ashamed of you, Penelope; or I should be if you meant what you say. She can make the people love her if she tries; when did she ever fail at that? But with Mr. Macdonald’s talent, to say nothing of his family connections, he is sure to get a church in Edinburgh in a few years if he wishes. Undoubtedly, it would not be a great match in a money sense. I suppose he has a manse and three or four hundred pounds a year.”
“That sum would do nicely for cabs.”
“Penelope, you are flippant!”
“I don’t mean it, dear; it’s only for fun; and it would be so absurd if we should leave Francesca over here as the presiding genius of an Inchcaldy parsonage—I mean a manse!”
“It isn’t as if she were penniless,” continued Salemina; “she has fortune enough to assure her own independence, and not enough to threaten his—the ideal amount. I hardly think the good Lord’s first intention was to make her a minister’s wife, but He knows very well that Love is a master architect. Francesca is full of beautiful possibilities if Mr. Macdonald is the man to bring them out, and I am inclined to think he is.”
“He has brought out impishness so far,” I objected.
“The impishness is transitory,” she returned, “and I am speaking of permanent qualities. His is the stronger and more serious nature, Francesca’s the sweeter and more flexible. He will be the oak-tree, and she will be the sunshine playing in the branches.”
“Salemina, dear,” I said penitently, kissing her grey hair, “I apologise: you are not absolutely ignorant about Love, after all, when you call him the master architect; and that is very lovely and very true about the oak-tree and the sunshine.”
‘“Love, I maun gang to Edinbrugh,Love, I maun gang an’ leave thee!”She sighed right sair, an’ said nae mairBut “O gin I were wi’ ye!”’
Andrew Lammie.
Jean Dalziel came to visit us a week ago, and has put new life into our little circle. I suppose it was playing ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ that set us thinking about it, for one warm, idle day when we were all in the Glen we began a series of ballad-revels, in which each of us assumed a favourite character. The choice induced so much argument and disagreement that Mr. Beresford was at last appointed head of the clan; and having announced himself formally as The Mackintosh, he was placed on the summit of a hastily arranged pyramidal cairn. He was given an ash wand and a rowan-tree sword; and then, according to ancient custom, his pedigree and the exploits of his ancestors were recounted, and he was exhorted to emulate their example. Now it seems that a Highland chief of the olden time, being as absolute in his patriarchal authority as any prince, had a corresponding number of officers attached to his person. He had a bodyguard, who fought around him in battle, and independent of this he had a staff of officers who accompanied him wherever he went. These our chief proceeded to appoint as follows:—
Henchman, Ronald Macdonald; bard, Penelope Hamilton; spokesman or fool, Robin Anstruther; sword-bearer, Francesca Monroe; piper, Salemina; piper’s attendant, Elizabeth Ardmore; baggage gillie, Jean Dalziel; running footman, Ralph; bridle gillie, Jamie; ford gillie, Miss Grieve. The ford gillie carries the chief across fords only, and there are no fords in the vicinity; so Mr. Beresford, not liking to leave a member of our household out of office, thought this the best post for Calamity Jane.
With The Mackintosh on his pyramidal cairn matters went very much better, and at Jamie’s instigation we began to hold rehearsals for certain festivities at Rowardennan; for as Jamie’s birthday fell on the eve of the Queen’s Jubilee, there was to be a gay party at the Castle.
All this occurred days ago, and yesterday evening the ballad-revels came off, and Rowardennan was a scene of great pageant and splendour. Lady Ardmore, dressed as the Lady of Inverleith, received the guests, and there were all manner of tableaux, and ballads in costume, and pantomimes, and a grand march by the clan, in which we appeared in our chosen roles.
Salemina was Lady Maisry—she whom all the lords of the north countrie came wooing.
‘But a’ that they could say to her,Her answer still was “Na.”’
And again:—
‘“O haud your tongues, young men,” she said,“And think nae mair on me!”’
Mr. Beresford was Lord Beichan, and I was Shusy Pye
‘Lord Beichan was a Christian born,And such resolved to live and dee,So he was ta’en by a savage Moor,Who treated him right cruellie.The Moor he had an only daughter,The damsel’s name was Shusy Pye;And ilka day as she took the airLord Beichan’s prison she pass’d by.’
Elizabeth Ardmore was Leezie Lindsay, who kilted her coats o’ green satin to the knee and was aff to the Hielands so expeditiously when her lover declared himself to be ‘Lord Ronald Macdonald, a chieftain of high degree.’
Francesca was Mary Ambree.
‘When captaines couragious, whom death cold not daunte,Did march to the siege of the citty of Gaunt,They mustred their souldiers by two and by three,And the foremost in battle was Mary Ambree.When the brave sergeant-major was slaine in her sightWho was her true lover, her joy and delight,Because he was slaine most treacherouslie,Then vow’d to avenge him Mary Ambree.’
Brenda Macrae from Pettybaw House was Fairly Fair; Jamie, Sir Patrick Spens; Ralph, King Alexander of Dunfermline; Mr. Anstruther, Bonnie Glenlogie, ‘the flower o’ them a’;’ Mr. Macdonald and Miss Dalziel, Young Hynde Horn and the king’s daughter Jean respectively.
‘“Oh, it’s Hynde Horn fair, and it’s Hynde Horn free;Oh, where were you born, and in what countrie?”“In a far distant countrie I was born;But of home and friends I am quite forlorn.”Oh, it’s seven long years he served the king,But wages from him he ne’er got a thing;Oh, it’s seven long years he served, I ween,And all for love of the king’s daughter Jean.’
It is not to be supposed that all this went off without any of the difficulties and heart-burnings that are incident to things dramatic. When Elizabeth Ardmore chose to be Leezie Lindsay, she asked me to sing the ballad behind the scenes. Mr. Beresford naturally thought that Mr. Macdonald would take the opposite part in the tableau, inasmuch as the hero bears his name; but he positively declined to play Lord Ronald Macdonald, and said it was altogether too personal.
Mr. Anstruther was rather disagreeable at the beginning, and upbraided Miss Dalziel for offering to be the king’s daughter Jean to Mr. Macdonald’s Hynde Horn, when she knew very well he wanted her for Ladye Jeanie in Glenlogie. (She had meantime confided to me that nothing could induce her to appear in Glenlogie; it was far too personal.)
Mr. Macdonald offended Francesca by sending her his cast-off gown and begging her to be Sir Patrick Spens; and she was still more gloomy (so I imagined) because he had not proffered his six feet of manly beauty for the part of the captain in Mary Ambree, when the only other person to take it was Jamie’s tutor. He is an Oxford man and a delightful person, but very bow-legged; added to that, by the time the rehearsals had ended she had been obliged to beg him to love some one more worthy than herself, and did not wish to appear in the same tableau with him, feeling that it was much too personal.
When the eventful hour came, yesterday, Willie and I were the only actors really willing to take lovers’ parts, save Jamie and Ralph, who were but too anxious to play all the characters, whatever their age, sex, colour, or relations. But the guests knew nothing of these trivial disagreements, and at ten o’clock last night it would have been difficult to match Rowardennan Castle for a scene of beauty and revelry. Everything went merrily till we came to Hynde Horn, the concluding tableau, and the most effective and elaborate one on the programme. At the very last moment, when the opening scene was nearly ready, Jean Dalziel fell down a secret staircase that led from the tapestry chamber into Lady Ardmore’s boudoir, where the rest of us were dressing. It was a short flight of steps, but as she held a candle, and was carrying her costume, she fell awkwardly, spraining her wrist and ankle. Finding that she was not maimed for life, Lady Ardmore turned with comical and unsympathetic haste to Francesca, so completely do amateur theatricals dry the milk of kindness in the human breast.
“Put on these clothes at once,” she said imperiously, knowing nothing of the volcanoes beneath the surface. “Hynde Horn is already on the stage, and somebody must be Jean. Take care of Miss Dalziel, girls, and ring for more maids. Helene, come and dress Miss Monroe; put on her slippers while I lace her gown; run and fetch more jewels,—more still,—she can carry off any number; not any rouge, Helene—she has too much colour now; pull the frock more off the shoulders—it’s a pity to cover an inch of them; pile her hair higher—here, take my diamond tiara, child; hurry, Helene, fetch the silver cup and the cake—no, they are on the stage; take her train, Helene. Miss Hamilton, run and open the doors ahead of them, please. I won’t go down for this tableau. I’ll put Miss Dalziel right, and then I’ll slip into the drawing-room, to be ready for the guests when they come in.”
We hurried breathlessly through an interminable series of rooms and corridors. I gave the signal to Mr. Beresford, who was nervously waiting for it in the wings, and the curtain went up on Hynde Horn disguised as the auld beggar man at the king’s gate. Mr. Beresford was reading the ballad, and we took up the tableaux at the point where Hynde Horn has come from a far countrie to see why the diamonds in the ring given him by his own true love have grown pale and wan. He hears that the king’s daughter Jean has been married to a knight these nine days past.