Two women, one well past middle age and the other just turned seventeen,
walked along Princes Street in Edinburgh one morning, taking in deep
breaths of the warm heather-scented breeze from the inland hills.
Perhaps they were exiles, restored to their native land after long
wanderings in distant countries. Who could tell? At least a passer-by
might have thought as much from the expressions of intense pleasure that
animated their two faces. And, as if it were not enough to be treading
the soil trod by one's ancestors, there came to them the sound of a
bagpipe (bagpipes are not so plentiful in Edinburgh as of yore),
actually playing their own stirring ancestral chant:
"The Campbells are coming,
Oh, ho! Oh, ho!"
"Well of all the strange coincidences, my dear Wilhelmina," exclaimed
the elder of the two women, none other than Miss Helen Eustace Campbell.
"Isn't it, cousin?" cried Billie, her soul fired with the martial
strains of her ancestors.
But stranger than the coincidence of the bagpipe was the condition of
the weather. It was a bright and beautiful day!
"When I was here more than thirty years ago it rained perpetually,"
remarked Miss Campbell. "As much as I loved Edinburgh and valued its
associations with former generations of my family, I will admit to you
privately, my dear, that I was glad to leave."
There was a subdued excitement in Miss Campbell's voice, but Billie did
not notice it. She smiled dreamily.
"I think I could love it even in rainy weather," she said. "It is the
most picturesque and beautiful city I was ever in."
She raised her eyes with worshipful reverence to Edinburgh Castle, old
and gray, perched on the summit of a bold rock in the distance, like an
ancient sentinel always on duty.
The two wanderers, who had by some accident of fate been born in a
foreign land when they might just as well have been born in Scotland
where they really belonged, walked on the air of expectancy.
Behind them followed those three alien persons of Irish and English
descent who regarded the sights like any common tourists and experienced
only tourists' palpitations.
Miss Campbell pulled out her watch nervously.
"Did our Cousin Annie say that half past one was the lunch hour?" she
asked.
"Yes," answered Billie. "The note said, 'It would felicitate me if you,
my dear Cousin Helen, and my younger cousin, Wilhelmina, and your three
American friends, will lunch with me this afternoon at half past one.'"
"A very unusual woman, my dear," said Miss Campbell. "Thirty years ago
she was the very pink of propriety----"
"Meaning as stiff as a ramrod?" asked Billie.
"Well, yes, a little stiff, to the free and easy American type. We must
mind our manners this afternoon and be very careful what we do and say."
"In the meantime, we'll enjoy life," cried Billie. "We'll look at the
Old Town and the Castle and when the time comes for lunch, we'll bottle
up our spirits and pretend we are just Scotch spinsters and members of
the Presbyterian Church. And, by the way, Cousin Helen, are you going to
mention that in the last hundred years we've turned Episcopal?"
"We sha'n't thrust it on her, child," replied the little lady. "If she
brings up the subject, of course we will have to tell her the truth."
"We might say," went on Billie, "that the only Presbyterian preacher in
West Haven is, to speak plainly, fairly dull."
"Oh, my dear child, never confess a thing like that to your Cousin Annie
Campbell. It is just possible she might consider it wicked to be
anything else but dull."
"Are we going to the Castle now?" demanded Mary Price, running up
breathlessly.
"We are so," answered Billie. "We are on the way and Cousin Helen's
going to walk because she loves every inch of Edinburgh soil."
And walk they did up the steep hill, and Miss Helen never once made her
usual complaint:
"My dears, I'm afraid I'm getting to be an old woman."
At the top they paused to look at the view,--and there is hardly a more
beautiful one in all the world: first the irregular roofs of the Old
Town, once the center of fashion in Edinburgh; then a sheer drop into
the New Town, gay and airy and highly picturesque, diversified with its
terraced gardens, its spires and steeples; and farther on still, the
sea, shimmering blue and dotted with white sails.
Then they crossed the drawbridge over the ancient moat and passed under
a portcullis. Here Mary paused and burst out with:
"'What, warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall!
The steed along the drawbridge flies
Just as it trembles on the rise;
Not lighter does a swallow skim
Along the smooth lake's level brim.'"
The girls giggled freely over this exhibition of Mary's enthusiasm and
an old gentleman who happened to be entering the castle at the same time
smiled with great amusement, and, lifting his hat, said to Miss
Campbell:
"It warms an old heart to hear young lips recite the good old rhymes."
But, after all, the exterior of the grand old building and the view
interested the girls more than the Crown Room inside or even the museum,
and it was not long before they were on their way to the Old Town whose
tortuous narrow streets and toppling houses, some of them ten stories
high and more, were the most picturesque tenements the Motor Maids had
ever seen. Through the crooked alleys they wandered, peeping under dark
arches and up long flights of steps. Occasionally at the end of a
tunnel-like street, narrow enough to touch the walls on either side,
they caught a glimpse of a white sail on a deep blue strip of water.
At last, entirely unconscious that they were footsore and weary to the
point of shedding tears, they descended by one of the quaint streets to
Holyrood Palace, gray and silent, where the rooms of the ill-fated Mary
Queen of Scots are still preserved.
How many murders were done behind those old walls! What a nest of
intrigue and plots it had once been! Suddenly, Miss Helen Campbell began
to feel her nerves. Hunger and fatigue had done their work.
"Billie," she exclaimed in a weak voice, "I am sure Holyrood Palace
feels no older than I do this minute. I am ready to crumble into a
handful of dust. If it's not lunch time, we must go back to the hotel
and rest a bit."
Billie looked at her watch.
"Heavens!" she ejaculated. "We haven't but two minutes to reach Cousin
Annie's. Oh, dear! And we did want to be on time."
They tried to find two cabs, but the Palace is in a mean quarter of the
city and there was no cab in sight. They tried to hasten the lagging
footsteps of the little lady, but for some inexplicable reason she
lagged the more.
"I will not be rushed along," she cried. "Annie Campbell can wait. She's
been waiting for sixty years. It won't hurt her to wait a little
longer."
"Waiting for what, Cousin Helen,--a husband?" asked Billie, who also was
weary and hungry to the point of extreme exasperation.
But Miss Campbell did not reply.
By dint of inquiring at every street corner and much impatient studying
of maps, they finally found the house wherein lived this spinster relic
of the Campbell family. Nearly twenty minutes late for lunch, they
sounded the knocker with the desperate determination to see the thing
through if death or imprisonment resulted.
If you have ever been a tourist in Europe, you will recall having felt
the same way when you have been seeing sights all day and forgotten the
lunch hour.
The house had the aspect of a prison indeed from outside, with its thick
gray walls, iron gratings on the windows of the lower story, and massive
front doors. And the old woman who admitted them might have been a
matron of the prison, so stern and uncompromising was her expression.
She ushered them silently through a broad, dark hall with stiff,
high-backed chairs ranged against the wall, to the drawing-room.
Now, Miss Campbell had an angelic disposition, but even angels, when put
to the test by fatigue and hunger and also a strange and unacknowledged
flutter in the region of the heart, may be a trifle irritable. If Annie
Campbell was going to be as stiff as a starched shirt and formal and all
that, _she_ was just going to be a little stiffer. There was a blister
on her heel that minute that was agonizing to a degree, and if Annie
Campbell had been any other person but a prim, Scotch spinster, she
would have asked for the loan of a pair of slippers.
All these aggressive and agitated thoughts were flying through the
little lady's head like small, angry clouds before the coming storm, as
she led the way into one of the most charming parlors ever seen. A
splendidly handsome old lady in black silk came forward with both hands
outstretched. Her tall erect figure was well filled out; her features
regular; her hair still showed signs of having once been red, and her
brown eyes were wells of intelligent humor.
"My dear cousin," she exclaimed. "It will have been many years since we
met in this room."
Billie was surprised. She had assuredly been prepared for something
quite different, and she wondered why Miss Helen Campbell had spoken of
her cousin with so much irritation. Miss Annie Campbell was certainly
the very opposite of her Cousin Helen in looks and figure, but, it must
be confessed, equally as handsome. What beautiful young girls they must
have been forty years ago!
"My dear Annie, don't speak of the years," exclaimed Miss Helen with
much agitation. "Age is the only thing that has come to us. We are still
spinsters."
Annie's beautiful brown eyes and Helen's heavenly blue ones exchanged a
long, meaningful glance.
"Ah, well, Helen," said Annie, "you will be remembering the old song:
"'We twa ha' rin aboot the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wandered monie a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.'"
"We've wandered monie a weary foot to-day, my dear," answered Miss
Helen, a trifle flippantly.
"I never heard so much 'my dearing,'" thought Billie. "Will Cousin Helen
never introduce us?"
"And which will be my other American cousin?" asked Miss Annie, with the
evident intention of putting bygones out of her mind and being entirely
polite and charming. "But I can guess without being told," she added,
embracing Billie. "You're the image of your father, child. You have the
same gray eyes; the same glint of gold color in the hair. You're a
Campbell, indeed, and glad I am to welcome you to Edinburgh."
Miss Annie spoke with a beautiful English accent and only occasionally
lapsed into Scotch dialect. There was a decided b-r-r-r to her r's at
all times, however, especially when she was telling an anecdote, and she
told numbers of them during that memorable visit.
While Billie introduced her friends and greetings were being exchanged,
Miss Helen turned her somewhat agitated gaze about the fine old room.
The polished surfaces of the floor and mahogany tables and cabinets
reflected the glow of the wood fire and the shining brass of the fender.
On a corner of the mantel was a Canton jar filled with peacock feathers,
which, with the red damask curtains at the windows and the old faded
Turkey rug, gave a certain richness to the room,--the luster of time and
careful usage.
"Not a thing changed, I see," observed Miss Helen, "not even the
peacocks' feathers in the Canton vase."
There was an accusing note in her voice when Miss Annie replied:
"We Campbells do not change, do we, Helen? Neither ourselves nor our
homes," and Billie felt more and more convinced that some girlhood
difference had separated the two cousins years before.
But the Scotch Miss Campbell was very hospitable and friendly,
nevertheless. She led them upstairs, and in one of the vast bedrooms
they washed the grime of Edinburgh smoke from their faces, and smoothed
their front hair.
"Why don't you ask her for a pair of slippers to ease your feet, Cousin
Helen?" Billie suggested.
"I'd rather die," replied that lady decisively.
At last, at an inexcusably late hour, they went down to luncheon and
were served by the same uncompromising female who had opened the door.
Hot tea and certain rather queer, unaccustomed kinds of food warmed and
cheered the five weary tourists, and presently they were all talking
amiably together. It was evident that Miss Annie Campbell enjoyed the
conversation of her young visitors. She asked them a hundred questions
about America, and she amused them by relating some of the ghostly old
legends that are clustered about Edinburgh as thickly as barnacles on
the hull of a ship.
It was Mary Price, however, who, by some unconscious suggestion that she
could not explain, presently told a story that she had read that morning
in an old book, which came near to bringing the strained situation to a
climax.
"Did you ever hear the tale of the two sisters who lived in the old
town?" she began. "They quarreled when they were young and never spoke
again. They lived for forty years in the same room up in one of those
topply houses. A chalk line was drawn across the middle of the floor and
there they slept and cooked and lived, each on her own side and never a
word was spoken in all that time."
"And didn't they ever make up?" demanded Nancy.
"No, they died unreconciled, the book said."
"What a dreadful story," exclaimed Elinor.
"The Scotch are very unforgiving people," put in Miss Annie.
"I'm thinking their own sins are just as great as the unforgiven sins of
others," finished Miss Helen.
The two spinsters glared at each other. The four young girls were quite
frightened. Nancy stifled a little tremulous giggle and Billie was about
to cast herself into the breach by a perfectly irrelevant remark, when
the Scotch woman servant appeared at the door and announced:
"Meester David Ramsay is in the drawing-room."
Miss Helen Campbell dropped her hands at her sides helplessly.
"Annie," she said, "why didn't you tell me?"
"I wasn't sure you'd come if I had, Helen. But you will have forgiven
him after all these years. He's an old man now," she continued in a
pleading tone.
"Has--has he ever married?" asked Miss Helen tremulously.
"No, no, that he hasn't," answered the other spinster smiling.
A look of intense relief radiated Miss Helen's face.
"Cousin Annie," she said, "shall we rub out the chalk line and forget
the past?"
"I'm muckle glad to do it, Cousin Helen," said the other.
Whereupon the two ladies kissed and with arms interlocked marched into
the drawing-room.
The four girls lingered behind in the dining-room. That there had been
some romance in Miss Helen's past they all well knew, and now it did
look as if they had stumbled against it.
They gathered in a whispering group near the window looking into a trim,
pretty garden.
"Billie, do you know the story?" demanded Nancy with uncontrollable
curiosity.
"No," answered Billie, "I wish I did. And the worst of it is, we can
never, never ask, because she might not like it and I wouldn't want to
take any risk. Even Papa doesn't know it. She has never mentioned it to
a soul."
"It must have been a love affair," put in Mary.
"Of course," added Elinor.
"Oh, Billie, couldn't you ask? I can't stand not knowing," exclaimed
Nancy.
The old serving woman who was passing quietly through the room at this
juncture came over to them.
"I ha' been livin' in the family this monie and monie a year," she said,
"an' I know the tale well, Miss. It's the auld, auld story of the twa
bonnie lassies and a braw laddie who could not decide which he liked
best, blue eyes or brown. It was back and forth he was from one to
other, 'til they was all three half distracted like, and there was a
grand quarrel amongst 'em. Then one went awa' to the wars, and one went
to her hame across the seas and one stayed in her ain countree. An'
that's the sum and gist of it. And if the three hearts bracht, it was
even so God's will and the decree of Providence."
"It doesn't sound like three brachet hearts," remarked Billie, as the
noise of talk and laughter floated down the hall.
Presently they were summoned back to the drawing-room where they were
duly presented to Mr. David Ramsay. And a superb-looking old gentleman
he was, indeed, as handsome as a picture. Not one of the Motor Maids but
felt a special thrill, when he smiled and pressed her hand.
They talked until late in the afternoon and the party did not break up
until Elinor had been prevailed upon to sit down at the tinkling little
old piano, and, accompanying herself, sing:
"'Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?
"'We twa ha' rin aboot the braes
An' pu'd the gowans fine,
But we've wandered monie a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.'"