Francesca's experiences were not so fortunate; indeed, I have never seen
her more out of sorts than she was during our long chat over the fire,
after our return to Breadalbane Terrace.
“How did you get on with your delightful minister?” inquired Salemina
of the young lady, as she flung her unoffending wrap over the back of a
chair. “He was quite the handsomest man in the room; who is he?”
“He is the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable,
condescending, ill-tempered prig I ever met!”
“Why, Francesca!” I exclaimed. “Lady Baird speaks of him as her
favourite nephew, and says he is full of charm.”
“He is just as full of charm as he was when I met him,” returned the
girl nonchalantly; “that is, he parted with none of it this evening.
He was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and oh! so Scotch! I believe if one
punctured him with a hat-pin, oatmeal would fly into the air!”
“Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the
immeasurable advantages of our sleeping-car system, the superiority of
our fast-running elevators, and the height of our buildings?” observed
Salemina.
“I mentioned them,” Francesca answered evasively.
“You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate?”
“Oh, I alluded to it; but only when he said that our hot summers must be
insufferable.”
“I suppose you repeated the remark you made at luncheon, that the ladies
you had seen in Princes Street were excessively plain?”
“Yes, I did!” she replied hotly; “but that was because he said that
American girls generally looked bloodless and frail. He asked if it
were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Wasn't that
unendurable? I answered that those were the chief solid article of food,
but that after their complexions were established, so to speak, their
parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the diet.”
“What did he say to that?” I asked.
“Oh, he said, 'Quite so, quite so'; that was his invariable response to
all my witticisms. Then when I told him casually that the shops looked
very small and dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as many
tartans and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked
that as to the latter point, the American season had not opened yet!
Presently he asserted that no royal city in Europe could boast ten
centuries of such glorious and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said it
did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything in
Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no idea
of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He retorted
that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of the
ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a Goethe,
Boston without its twang!”
“Incredible!” cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. “He
never could have said 'twang' unless you had tried him beyond measure!”
“I dare say I did; he is easily tried,” returned Francesca. “I asked
him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in Boston. 'No,' he said, 'it is
not necessary to GO there! And while we are discussing these matters,'
he went on, 'how is your American dyspepsia these days,--have you
decided what is the cause of it?'
“'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash; 'we have always taken in
more foreigners than we could assimilate!' I wanted to tell him that one
Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere, but I
restrained myself.”
“I am glad you did restrain yourself--once,” exclaimed Salemina. “What
a tactful person the Reverend Ronald must be, if you have reported
him faithfully! Why didn't you give him up, and turn to your other
neighbour?”
“I did, as soon as I could with courtesy; but the man on my left was the
type that always haunts me at dinners; if the hostess hasn't one on her
visiting-list she imports one for the occasion. He asked me at once of
what material the Brooklyn Bridge is made. I told him I really didn't
know. Why should I? I seldom go over it. Then he asked me whether it was
a suspension bridge or a cantilever. Of course I didn't know; I am not
an engineer.”
“You are so tactlessly, needlessly candid,” I expostulated. “Why didn't
you say boldly that the Brooklyn Bridge is a wooden cantilever, with
gutta-percha braces? He didn't know, or he wouldn't have asked you. He
couldn't find out until he reached home, and you would never have
seen him again; and if you had, and he had taunted you, you could have
laughed vivaciously and said you were chaffing. That is my method, and
it is the only way to preserve life in a foreign country. Even my
earl, who did not thirst for information (fortunately), asked me the
population of the Yellowstone Park, and I simply told him three hundred
thousand, at a venture.”
“That would never have satisfied my neighbour,” said Francesca. “Finding
me in such a lamentable state of ignorance, he explained the principle
of his own stupid Forth Bridge to me. When I said I understood
perfectly, just to get into shallower water, where we wouldn't need any
bridge, the Reverend Ronald joined in the conversation, and asked me to
repeat the explanation to him. Naturally I couldn't, and he knew that I
couldn't when he asked me, so the bridge man (I don't know his name,
and don't care to know it) drew a diagram of the national idol on his
dinner-card and gave a dull and elaborate lecture upon it. Here is the
card, and now that three hours have intervened I cannot tell which way
to turn the drawing so as to make the bridge right side up; if there
is anything puzzling in the world, it is these architectural plans and
diagrams. I am going to pin it to the wall and ask the Reverend Ronald
which way it goes.”
“Do you mean that he will call upon us?” we cried in concert.
“He asked if he might come and continue our 'stimulating' conversation,
and as Lady Baird was standing by I could hardly say no. I am sure of
one thing: that before I finish with him I will widen his horizon so
that he will be able to see something beside Scotland and his little
insignificant Fifeshire parish! I told him our country parishes in
America were ten times as large as his. He said he had heard that they
covered a good deal of territory, and that the ministers' salaries were
sometimes paid in pork and potatoes. That shows you the style of his
retorts!”
“I really cannot decide which of you was the more disagreeable,” said
Salemina; “if he calls, I shall not remain in the room.”
“I wouldn't gratify him by staying out,” retorted Francesca. “He is
extremely good for the circulation; I think I was never so warm in my
life as when I talked with him; as physical exercise he is equal to
bicycling. The bridge man is coming to call, too. I made him a diagram
of Breadalbane Terrace, and a plan of the hall and staircase, on my
dinner-card. He was distinctly ungrateful; in fact, he remarked that he
had been born in this very house, but would not trust himself to find
his way upstairs with my plan as a guide. He also said the American
vocabulary was vastly amusing, so picturesque, unstudied, and fresh.”
“That was nice, surely,” I interpolated.
“You know perfectly well that it was an insult.”
“Francesca is very like that young man,” laughed Salemina, “who,
whenever he engaged in controversy, seemed to take off his flesh and sit
in his nerves.”
“I'm not supersensitive,” replied Francesca, “but when one's vocabulary
is called picturesque by a Britisher, one always knows he is thinking of
cowboys and broncos. However, I shifted the weight into the other scale
by answering 'Thank you. And your phraseology is just as unusual to
us.' 'Indeed?' he said with some surprise. 'I supposed our method of
expression very sedate and uneventful.' 'Not at all,' I returned, 'when
you say, as you did a moment ago, that you never eat potato to your
fish.' 'But I do not,' he urged obtusely. 'Very likely,' I argued, 'but
the fact is not of so much importance as the preposition. Now I eat
potato WITH my fish.' 'You make a mistake,' he said, and we both laughed
in spite of ourselves, while he murmured, 'eating potato WITH fish--how
extraordinary.' Well, the bridge man may not add perceptibly to the
gaiety of the nations, but he is better than the Reverend Ronald. I
forgot to say that when I chanced to be speaking of doughnuts, that
'unconquer'd Scot' asked me if a doughnut resembled a peanut? Can you
conceive such ignorance?”
“I think you were not only aggressively American, but painfully
provincial,” said Salemina, with some warmth. “Why in the world should
you drag doughnuts into a dinner-table conversation in Edinburgh? Why
not select topics of universal interest?”
“Like the Currie Brig or the shade of Montrose,” I murmured slyly.
“To one who has ever eaten a doughnut, the subject is of transcendent
interest; and as for one who has not--well, he should be made to feel
his limitations,” replied Francesca, with a yawn. “Come, let us forget
our troubles in sleep; it is after midnight.”
About half an hour later she came to my bedside, her dark hair hanging
over her white gown, her eyes still bright.
“Penelope,” she said softly, “I did not dare tell Salemina, and I should
not confess it to you save that I am afraid Lady Baird will complain of
me; but I was dreadfully rude to the Reverend Ronald! I couldn't help
it; he roused my worst passions. It all began with his saying he
thought international marriages presented even more difficulties to the
imagination than the other kind. I hadn't said anything about marriages
nor thought anything about marriages of any sort, but I told him
INSTANTLY I considered that every international marriage involved
two national suicides. He said that he shouldn't have put it quite so
forcibly, but that he hadn't given much thought to the subject. I said
that I had, and I thought we had gone on long enough filling the coffers
of the British nobility with American gold.”
“FRANCES!” I interrupted. “Don't tell me that you made that vulgar,
cheap newspaper assertion!”
“I did,” she replied stoutly, “and at the moment I only wished I could
make it stronger. If there had been anything cheaper or more vulgar, I
should have said it, but of course there isn't. Then he remarked that
the British nobility merited and needed all the support it could get in
these hard times, and asked if we had not cherished some intention in
the States, lately, of bestowing it in greenbacks instead of gold! I
threw all manners to the winds after that and told him that there were
no husbands in the world like American men, and that foreigners never
seemed to have any proper consideration for women. Now, were my remarks
any worse than his, after all, and what shall I do about it anyway?”
“You should go to bed first,” I murmured sleepily; “and if you ever have
an opportunity to make amends, which I doubt, you should devote yourself
to showing the Reverend Ronald the breadth of your own horizon instead
of trying so hard to broaden his. As you are extremely pretty, you may
possibly succeed; man is human, and I dare say in a month you will
be advising him to love somebody more worthy than yourself. (He could
easily do it!) Now don't kiss me again, for I am displeased with you; I
hate international bickering!”
“So do I,” agreed Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, “and
there is no spectacle so abhorrent to every sense as a narrow-minded man
who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is awfully
good-looking,--I will say that for him: and if you don't explain me to
Lady Baird, I will write to Mr. Beresford about the earl. There was
no bickering there; it was looking at you two that made us think of
international marriages.”
“It must have suggested to you that speech about filling the coffers of
the British nobility,” I replied sarcastically, “inasmuch as the earl
has twenty thousand pounds a year, probably, and I could barely buy two
gold hairpins to pin on the coronet. There, do go away and leave me in
peace!”
“Good night again, then,” she said, as she rose reluctantly from the
foot of the bed. “I doubt if I can sleep for thinking what a pity it
is that such an egotistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular,
bigoted person should be so handsome! And who wants to marry him any
way, that he should be so distressed about international alliances?
One would think that all female America was sighing to lead him to the
altar!”