WELCOME, LASSIES, TO SCOTLAND
Dr. Beulah's question went unanswered. The clank of the chain as
deckhands dropped the gang-plank from ship to shore attracted the
attention of the girls even as she asked it. Now they moved forward
slowly, with the rest of the passengers.
"We're almost there! We're almost there!" Bess could hardly contain
herself. "Now we are getting nearer and nearer and nearer. One more
step. Two more steps. We made it!" she exclaimed triumphantly as she
stepped her foot on the gangplank and carefully walked its length. Nan
was at her heels. Then one by one the others disentangled themselves
from the crowded deck and joined those on shore, until they all stood
together, "like a group of lost baffled children," Dr. Prescott said, as
she joined them and herded them through a door and into a long shed-like
station.
There, everything seemed in confusion. "It's like the Grand Central
Station in New York and the dock where we boarded the ship all rolled
into one," Laura whispered into Nan's ear.
"Yes, only you don't see kilted highlanders and bagpipes and English
officers in either of those places," Nan returned, waving and smiling
across the top of somebody's bags to Hetty, who had attracted her
attention from the distance.
"Welcome, lassies, to Scotland." A voice from behind them caused them to
turn and there was Jeanie. "Ha' ye learned your way aboot yet?" she
grinned at her American friends.
"We're no so guid as that." Nan recalled as best she could her own
mother's Scotch dialect, but let it go again as she called after Jeanie,
"Remember, it's tea in London during coronation week."
"Aye, and I'll not be forgettin'," Jeanie flung over her shoulder before
she was lost in the crowd of English, Irish and Scotch people.
"Porter, porter, porter." "Taxi, taxi." "Car for Royal Scott Hotel." The
calls were all around them in more variations of the English tongue than
they ever knew existed.
"Here, girls, this way," Dr. Prescott beckoned them to follow her.
"Here's the baggage."
Bess turned and followed her. Rhoda, Amelia, Grace, and Laura were
already at her side. Nan started too, but a small child, tears streaming
down its face, halted her.
She stooped down, pulled its grimy fists out of its eyes, pushed its
blond hair back, and comforted, "There, child, there. Don't cry. What
has happened?"
"I didna ken." The child cried harder than ever.
"Are you lost?"
"I didna ken," the answer was the same, but he grabbed hold of her coat
and pulled her along after him.
She glanced back toward her friends, but could catch no one's attention.
She stopped. The small force below her tugged hard at her coat.
"Ye canna stop noo." He was a persistent little Scotsman.
"No, I canna," Nan thought to herself and followed, wondering what it
was all about. He led her past the baggage, the train, and a small
window where men were busy changing American dollars to English pounds.
They passed lunch carts, magazine racks, and an information tower. Once
Nan stopped, but the little urchin's eyes filled so quickly with tears
that she gave up completely and resolved to find out what was wrong.
Finally, they came to a high iron fence through the gates of which no
one could go without a passport or permit. The small boy shied away from
this public entrance, followed the fence around to its joining with the
wall. There, stuffed between fence and concrete floor, was a bagpipe
almost as big as the child himself. He stooped over and tugged at it. It
wouldn't budge.
Nan knelt down and tugged, too. Between the two of them, after much
twisting and turning, pushing and pulling, the bagpipe was pulled
through. The child swung a strap over his shoulder, looked up at her
brightly now, and with a "thank ye, thank ye" ran along ahead of her
playing "On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond."
She saw him once again before she left the station. It was just before
the train pulled out. He stood beneath her compartment window and played
the same tune again. This time tourists were throwing pennies and
ha'pennies at his feet and he was smiling broadly.
He waved up at Nan and called, "Noo ane for ye." She laughed and nodded,
as he swung into the tune a third time. At the end, Nan tossed him a
coin. He fingered it carefully, his Scotch thrift fighting with his
feeling of gratitude, but finally the better man won and he threw it
back up to her.
The sound of his playing was still in her ears as the train pulled out
for Emberon. Though she could not have known it then, the single tune
that he knew was to be a kind of theme song playing itself most
unexpectedly through her Emberon experience.
The ride from Glasgow, Great Britain's second largest city, to Emberon,
a small village on the coast of one of Scotland's many fjords took only
a few hours.
"It was a short ride," Nan wrote later to her mother, "from Glasgow to
Emberon, but such fun! The trains were queer, like those you see
sometimes in the movie with a corridor the whole length of each car. The
passengers all sit in little compartments that have two seats facing one
another. We all sat together, of course. Laura, Bess, and Dr. Beulah
were on one side and Grace, Rhoda, Amelia, and myself on the other. When
we ate, as we did soon after we were outside the city, the steward
pulled a little table down between us so that we were really quite snug
and cozy.
"It was nice, eating Scotch broth (and how good it was!) while a Scotch
landscape unwound itself at your side. I say this now, but, really, we
were so excited that we hardly knew at all what was happening. Oh,
mother, we are seeing so many strange new things all the time that my
tongue can hardly keep up with my eyes! When I get home I'm going to
talk and talk and talk until you feel as though you had taken the trip
yourself, but then you and Papa know all about it, because you were here
not long ago.
"You'd be surprised how many people I meet who remember you. The old
coachman who met us at the station, the people in the village, oh,
everyone here, tells me what a nice mother and father I have, until
sometimes I grow very lonesome to see you. I got your cable at Glasgow.
I am being very careful, truly, and I will write you all about
everything when I get to Edinburgh where I am hoping there will be some
letters from you. Until then--
My love,
Nan."
"Until then"--the words were simple, but how much was to happen "until
then."
Nan had been told what Emberon was like and had told her friends, but
even then it came as a surprise. She had known that it was a gray and
dreary looking place high up on a hill some distance from the village,
but how dreary she never could have imagined.
It was dusk when they drove up the steep rough road that was the only
entrance to the ancient estate. The high old-fashioned carriage that
they had climbed up into at the station rocked precariously from side to
side as the horses, almost as ancient as the carriage itself, pulled it
along.
In the half light, the girls looked at one another and at Dr. Beulah.
"It's almost spooky," Grace huddled closer to Laura as she spoke, "isn't
it?"
"These old estates," Dr. Beulah explained, "were almost all fortresses
at one time. They are built high up on hills so that they have a natural
means of defense against the surrounding country. The original owners
were lords who were almost kings in their own right. They fought, now
against one another, now against England, holding princes and
princesses, kings and queens as pawns. No man knew for sure who was his
friend and who his enemy.
"The stakes were high in those days. Each man thought that Scotland was
his for the fighting. So, when he got himself some land and built
himself his castle, he went out to conquer the surrounding country. It
was fight, fight, fight all the time, one Scottish clan against another.
"Then it was Scotland against England and the Scottish world was full of
spies. That very song the lad back in the station played over and over
again 'On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond,' is the story of a
Scotsman who was captured by the English. The lake itself is not very
far from here."
"I believe," she went on, as she saw that she had the attention of all
the girls, "that the hero of that song belonged to one of the Highland
clans and was captured by the English at the battle of Culloden. He was
taken to Carlisle where he was tried for treason and condemned to be
executed.
"But as a special favor," she paused and waited while the carriage went
around a sharp bend in the road, and then continued, "the night before
his execution, he was allowed to receive a visit from his betrothed. In
bidding her goodby--and she is supposed to have been a very beautiful
Scotch girl--his heart turned homeward to the scenes of other, happy
days. He told her that his spirit would be there before she arrived,
that he would meet her at their former trysting place."
"We'll meet where we parted in yon shady glen,
By the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond."
Nan was humming the words over to herself even as the carriage came to
a stop before the gates of the ancient estate. The driver climbed down
from his high seat in front and pulled a rope. A bell rang in the
distance, the gates opened, and now, almost proudly, the horses pulled
the carriage up a short driveway and stopped. A proud dignified old
gentleman came out to greet them.