CONCERNING BESOMS.
It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less
than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never
known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house. When the
sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from
the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart,
and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are
covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes. This
erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their
sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie. No man compelled
to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or
other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life,
and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his
talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged
for him at the Great Assize. Small wonder that he comes to regard the
world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted
at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit
dwelling-place all his years. When a prophet cometh from the Eternal
to speak unto modern times as Dante did unto the Middle Ages, and
constructs the other world before our eyes, he will have one circle in
his hell for the builders of rotten houses, and doubtless it will be a
collection of their own works, so that their sin will be its
punishment, as is most fitting and the way of things.
Surely there will also be some corner of heaven kept for the man who,
having received a charge to build the shell wherein two people were to
make a home, laid its foundations deep and raised strong walls that
nothing but gunpowder could rend in pieces, and roofed it over with
oaken timber and lined it with the same, so that many generations might
live therein in peace and honour. Such a house was the Lodge in those
days, although at last beginning to show signs of decay, and it somehow
stirred up the heroic spirit of the former time within a man to sit
before the big fire in the hall, with grim Carnegies looking down from
the walls and daring you to do any meanness, while the light blazing
out from a log was flung back from a sword that had been drawn in the
'15. One was unconsciously reinforced in the secret place of his
manhood, and inwardly convinced that what concerneth every man is not
whether he fail or succeed, but that he do his duty according to the
light which may have been given him until he die. It was also a
regeneration of the soul to awake in a room of the eastern tower, where
the Carnegies' guests slept, and fling up the window, with its small
square panes, to fill one's lungs with the snell northern air, and look
down on the woods glistening in every leaf, and the silver Tochty just
touched by the full risen sun. Miracles have been wrought in that
tower, for it happened once that an Edinburgh advocate came to stay at
the Lodge, who spake after a quite marvellous fashion, known neither in
England nor Scotland; and being himself of pure bourgeois blood, the
fifth son of a factor, felt it necessary to despise his land, from its
kirk downwards, and had a collection of japes at Scottish ways, which
in his provincial simplicity he offered to the Carnegies. It seemed to
him certain that people of Jacobite blood and many travels would have
relished his clever talk, for it is not given to a national decadent to
understand either the people he has deserted or the ancient houses at
whose door he stands. Carnegie was the dullest man living in the
matter of sneering, and Kate took an instant dislike to the mincing
little man, whom she ever afterwards called the Popinjay, and so
handled him with her tongue that his superiority was mightily shaken.
But there was good stuff in the advocate, besides some brains, and
after a week's living in the Lodge, he forgot to wear his eye-glass,
and let his r's out of captivity, and attempted to make love to Kate,
which foolishness that masterful damsel brought to speedy confusion.
It was also said that when he went back to the Parliament House, every
one could understand what he said, and that he got two briefs in one
week, which shows how good it is to live in an ancient house with
honest people.
"Is there a ghost, dad?" They were sitting before the fire in the hall
after dinner--Kate in her favourite posture, leaning forward and
nursing her knee. The veterans and I thought that she always looked at
her best so, with her fine eyes fixed on the fire, and the light
bringing her face into relief against the shadow. We saw her feet
then--one lifted a little from the ground--and V. C. declared they were
the smallest you could find for a woman of her size.
[Illustration: Kate in her favourite position.]
"She knows it, too," he used to say, "for when a woman has big feet she
always keeps them tucked in below her gown. A woman with an eight-size
glove and feet to correspond is usually a paragon of modesty, and
strong on women's rights."
"Kate's glove is number six, and I think it's a size too big," broke in
the Colonel--we were all lying in the sun on a bank below the beeches
at the time, and the Colonel was understood to be preparing a sermon
for some meeting--"but it's a strong little hand, and a steady; she
used to be able to strike a shilling in the air at revolver practice."
"Ghost, lassie. Oh, in the Lodge, a Carnegie ghost--not one I've ever
heard of; so you may sleep in peace, and I 'm below if you feel lonely
the first night."
"You are most insulting; one would think I were a milksop. I was
hoping for a ghost--a white lady by choice. Did no Carnegie murder his
wife, for instance, through jealousy or quarrelling?"
"The Carnegies have never quarrelled," said the General, with much
simplicity; "you see the men have generally been away fighting, and the
women had never time to weary of them."
"No woman ever wearies of a man unless he be a fool and gives in to
her--then she grows sick of him. Life might be wholesome, but it would
have no smack; it would be like meat without mustard. If a man cannot
rule, he ought not to marry, for his wife will play the fool in some
fashion or other like a runaway horse, and he has half the blame. Why
did he take the box-seat?" and Kate nodded to the fire. "What are you
laughing at?"
"Perhaps I ought to be shocked, but the thought of any one trying to
rule you, Kit, tickles me immensely. I have had the reins since you
were a bairn, and you have been a handful. You were a 'smatchit' at
six years old, and a 'trimmie' at twelve, and you are qualifying for
the highest rank in your class."
"What may that be, pray? it seems to me that the Scottish tongue is a
perfect treasure-house for impertinent people. How Scots must
congratulate themselves that they need never be at a loss when they are
angry or even simply frank."
"If it comes to downright swearing, you must go to Gaelic," said the
General, branching off. "Donald used to be quite contemptuous of any
slight efforts at profanity in the barrack yard, although they sickened
me. 'Toots, Colonel; ye do not need to be troubling yourself with such
poor little words, for they are just nothing at all, and yet the bodies
will be saying them over and over again like parrots. Now a Lochaber
man could hef been saying what he wass wanting for fifteen minutes, and
nefer hef used the same word twice, unless he had been forgetting his
Gaelic. It's a peautiful language, the Gaelic, when you will not be
fery well pleased with a man.'"
"That is very good, dad, but I think we were speaking in Scotch, and
you have not told me that nice complimentary title I am living to
deserve. Is 'cutty' the disreputable word? for I think I 've passed
that rank already; it sounds quite familiar."
"No, it's a far more fetching word than 'cutty,' or even than 'randy'
(scold), which you may have heard."
"I have," replied Kate instantly, "more than once, and especially after
I had a difference in opinion with Lieutenant Strange. You called me
one or two names then, dad---in fact you were quite eloquent; but you
know that he was a bad fellow, and that the regiment was well rid of
him; but I 'm older now, and I have not heard my promotion."
"It's the most vigorous word that Scots have for a particular kind of
woman."
"Describe her," demanded Kate.
"One who has a mind of her own," began the General, carefully, "and a
way, too, who is not easily cowed or managed, who is not . . ."
"A fool," suggested Kate.
"Who is not conspicuously soft in manner," pursued the General, with
discretion, "who might even have a temper."
"Not a tame rabbit, in fact. I understand what you are driving at, and
I know what a model must feel when she is being painted. And now
kindly pluck up courage and name the picture." And Kate leant back,
with her hand behind her head, challenging the General--if he dared.
"Well?"
"Besom." And he was not at all ashamed, for a Scot never uses this
word without a ring of fondness and admiration in his voice, as of one
who gives the world to understand that he quite disapproves of this
audacious woman, wife or daughter of his, but is proud of her all the
time. It is indeed a necessity of his nature for a Scot to have husks
of reproach containing kernels of compliment, so that he may let out
his heart and yet preserve his character as an austere person,
destitute of vanity and sentiment.
"Accept your servant's thanks, my General. I am highly honoured." And
Kate made a sweeping courtesy, whereupon they both laughed merrily; and
a log blazing up suddenly made an old Carnegie smile who had taken the
field for Queen Mary, and was the very man to have delighted in a besom.
"When I was here in June"--and the General stretched himself in a deep
red leather chair--"I stood a while one evening watching a fair-haired,
blue-eyed little maid who was making a daisy chain and singing to
herself in a garden. Her mother came out from the cottage, and, since
she did not see me, devoured the child with eyes of love. Then
something came into her mind--perhaps that the good man would soon be
home for supper; she rushed forward and seized the child, as if it had
been caught in some act of mischief. 'Come into the hoose, this
meenut, ye little beesom, an' say yir carritches. What's the chief end
o' man?'"
"Could she have been so accomplished at that age?" Kate inquired, with
interest. "Are you sure about the term of endearment? Was the child
visibly flattered?"
"She caught my eye as they passed in, and flung me a smile like one
excusing her mother's fondness. But Davidson hears better things, for
as soon as he appears the younger members of a family are taken from
their porridge and set to their devotions.
"'What are ye glowerin' at there, ye little cutty? Toom (empty) yir
mooth this meenut and say the twenty-third Psalm to the minister.'"
"Life seems full of incident, and the women make the play. What about
the men? Are they merely a chorus?"
"A stranger spending a week in one of our farm-houses would be ready to
give evidence in a court of justice that he had never seen women so
domineering or men so submissive as in Drumtochty.
"And why? Because the housewife who sits in church as if butter would
n't melt in her mouth speaks with much fluency and vigour at home, and
the man says nothing. His normal state is doing wrong and being
scolded from morning till night--for going out without his breakfast,
for not cleaning his boots when he comes in, for spoiling chairs by
sitting on them with wet clothes, for spilling his tea on the
tablecloth, for going away to market with a dusty coat, for visiting
the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors,
for saying things he ought n't when he does speak--till the
long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in
desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation,
'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's
little better than a threshing-mill.' His confusion, however, is
neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a
round of the farm in good heart, once or twice saying 'Sall' in a way
that shows a lively recollection of his wife's gifts."
"Then the men love to be ruled," began Kate, with some contempt; "it
does not give me a higher idea of the district."
"Wait a moment, young woman, for all that goes for nothing except to
show that the men allow the women to be supreme in one sphere."
"In the dairy, I suppose?"
"Perhaps; and a very pleasant kingdom, too, as I remember it, when a
hot, thirsty, tired laddie, who had been fishing or ferreting, was
taken into the cool, moist, darkened place, and saw a dish of milk
creamed for his benefit by some sonsy housewife. Sandie and I used to
think her omnipotent, and heard her put the gude man through his
facings with awe, but by-and-by we noticed that her power had limits.
When the matter had to do with anything serious, sowing or reaping or
kirk or market, his word was law.
"He said little, but it was final, and she never contradicted; it was
rare to hear a man call his wife by name; it was usually 'gude wife,'
and she always referred to him as the 'maister.' And without any
exception, these silent, reserved men were 'maister;' they had a look
of authority."
"They gave way in trifles, to rule in a crisis, which is just my idea
of masculine government," expatiated Kate. "A woman likes to say what
she pleases and have her will in little things; she has her way, and if
a man corrects her because she is inaccurate, and nags at her when she
does anything he does not approve, then he is very foolish and very
trying, and if she is not quite a saint, she will make him suffer.
"Do you remember Dr. Pettigrew, that prim little effigy of a man, and
his delightful Irish wife, and how conversation used to run when he was
within hearing?"
"Glad to have a tasting, Kit," and the General lay back in expectation.
"'Oi remember him, as foine an upstanding young officer as ye would
wish to see, six feet in his boots.'
"'About five feet ten, I believe, was his exact height, my dear.'
"'Maybe he was n't full grown then, but he was a good-looking man, and
as pretty a rider as ever sat on a horse. Well, he was a Warwickshire
man . . .'
"'Bucks, he said himself.'
"'He was maybe born in both counties for all you know.'
"'Alethea,' with a cough and reproving look.
"'At any rate Oi saw him riding in a steeplechase in the spring of '67,
at Aldershot.'
"'It must, I think, have been '66. We were at Gibraltar in '67.
Please be accurate.'
"'Bother your accuracy, for ye are driving the pigs through my story.
Well, Oi was telling ye about the steeplechase Jimmy Brook rode. It
was a mile, and he had led for half, and so he was just four hundred
yards from the post.'
"'A half would be eight hundred and eighty yards.'
"'Oi wish from my heart that geography, arithmetic, memory, and
accuracy, and every other work of Satan were drowned with Moses in the
Red Sea. Go, for any sake, and bring me a glass of irritated water.'"
"Capital," cried the General. "I heard that myself, or something like
it. Pettigrew was a tiresome wretch, but he was devoted to his wife in
his own way."
"Which was enough to make a woman throw things at him, as very likely
Alethea did when they were alone. What a fool he was to bother about
facts; the charm of Lithy was that she had none--dates and such like
would have made her quite uninteresting. The only dates I can quote
myself are the Rebellion and the Mutiny, and I 'll add the year we came
home. I don't like datey women; but then it's rather cheap for one to
say that who does n't know anything," and Kate sighed very becomingly
at the contemplation of her ignorance.
"Except French, which she speaks like a Parisian," murmured the General.
"That's a fluke, because I was educated at the Scotch convent with
these dear old absurd nuns who were Gordons, and Camerons, and
Macdonalds, and did n't know a word of English."
"Who can manage her horse like a rough-rider," continued the General,
counting on his finger, "and dance like a Frenchwoman, and play whist
like a half-pay officer, and--"
"That's not education; those are simply the accomplishments of a besom.
You know, dad, I 've never read a word of Darwin, and I got tired of
George Eliot and went back to Scott."
"I 've no education myself," said the General, ruefully, "except the
Latin the old dominie thrashed into me; and some French which all our
set in Scotland used to have, and . . . I can hold my own with the
broadsword. When I think of all those young officers know, I wonder we
old chaps were fit for anything."
"Well, you see, dad," and Kate began to count also, "you were made of
steel wire, and were never ill; you could march for a day and rather
enjoy a fight in the evening; you would go anywhere, and the men
followed just eighteen inches behind; you always knew what the enemy
was going to do before he did it, and you always did what he did n't
expect you to do. That's not half the list of your accomplishments,
but they make a good beginning for a fighting man."
"It will be all mathematics in the future, Kit, and there will be no
fighting at close quarters. The officers will wear gloves and
spectacles--but where are we now, grumbling as if we were sitting in a
club window? Besides, these young fellows can fight as well as pass
exams. You were saying that it was a shame of a man to complain of his
wife flirting," and the General studied the ceiling.
"You know that I never said anything of the kind; some women are flirty
in a nice way, just as some are booky, and some are dressy, and some
are witty, and some are horsey; and I think a woman should be herself.
I should say the right kind of man would be proud of his wife's strong
point, and give her liberty."
"He is to have none, I suppose, but just be a foil to throw her into
relief. Is he to be allowed any opinions of his own? . . . It looks
hard, that cushion, Kit, and I 'm an old broken-down man."
"You deserve leather, for you know what I think about a man's position
quite well. If he allow himself to be governed by his wife in serious
matters, he is not worth calling a man."
"Like poor Major Macintosh."
"Exactly. What an abject he was before that woman, who was simply--"
"Not a besom, Kate," interrupted the General, anxiously--afraid that a
classical word was to be misused.
"Certainly not, for a besom must be nice, and at bottom a lady--in
fact, a woman of decided character."
"Quite so. You 've hit the bull's-eye, Kit, and paid a neat compliment
to yourself. Have you a word for Mrs. Macintosh?"
"A vulgar termagant"--the General indicated that would do--"who would
call her husband an idiot aloud before a dinner-table, and quarrel like
a fishwife with people in his presence.
"Why, he daren't call his soul his own; he belonged to the kirk, you
know, and there was a Scotch padre, but she marched him off to our
service, and if you had seen him trying to find the places in the
Prayer-book. If a man has n't courage enough to stand by his faith, he
might as well go and hang himself. Don't you think the first thing is
to stick by your religion, and the next by your country, though it cost
one his life?"
"That's it, lassie; every gentleman does."
"She was a disgusting woman," continued Kate, "and jingling with money:
I never saw so many precious stones wasted on one woman; they always
reminded me of a jewel in a swine's snout."
"Kate!" remonstrated her father, "that's . . ."
"Rather coarse, but it's her blame; and to hear Mrs. Macintosh
calculating what each officer had--I told her we would live in a Lodge
at home and raise our own food. My opinion is that her father was a
publican, and I 'm sure she had once been a Methodist."
"Why?"
"Because she was so Churchy, always talking about celebrations and
vigils, and explaining that it was a sin to listen to a Dissenting
chaplain."
"Then, Kate, if your man--as they say here--tried to make you hold his
views?"
"I wouldn't, and I'd hate him."
"And if he accepted yours?"
"I 'd despise him," replied Kate, promptly.
"You are a perfect contradiction."
"You mean I 'm a woman, and a besom, and therefore I don't pretend to
be consistent or logical, or even fair, but I am right."
Then they went up the west tower to the General's room, and looked out
on the woods and the river, and on a field of ripe corn upon the height
across the river, flooded with the moonlight.
"Home at last, lassie, you and I, and another not far off, maybe."
Kate kissed her father, and said, "One in love, dad . . . and faith."