allow them all the responsibility, and said it would save a world of
trouble if the method could be universally adopted. He added that he
should be glad to part with a good many of his, but doubted whether I
would accept them, as they were "rather a scratch lot." (I use his own
language, which I thought delightfully easy for a belted earl.) He was
charmed with the story of Francesca and the lamiter, and offered to
drive me to Kildonan House, Helmsdale, on the first fine day. I told
him he was quite safe in making the proposition, for we had already
had the fine day, and we understood that the climate had exhausted
itself and retired for the season.
The gentleman on my right, a distinguished Dean of the Thistle, gave
me a few moments' discomfort by telling me that the old custom of
"rounds" of toasts still prevailed at Lady Baird's on formal
occasions, and that before the ladies retired every one would be
called upon for appropriate "sentiments."
"What sort of sentiments?" I inquired, quite overcome with terror.
"Oh, epigrammatic sentences expressive of moral feelings or virtues,"
replied my neighbor easily. "They are not quite as formal and
hackneyed now as they were in the olden time, when some of the
favorite toasts were 'May the pleasure of the evening bear the
reflections of the morning!' 'May the friends of our youth be the
companions of our old age!' 'May the honest heart never feel
distress!' 'May the hand of charity wipe the eye of sorrow!'"
"I can never do it in the world!" I ejaculated. "Oh, one ought never,
never to leave one's own country! A light-minded and cynical English
gentleman told me that I should frequently be called upon to read
hymns and recite verses of Scripture at family dinners in Edinburgh
and I hope I am always prepared to do that; but nobody warned me that
I should have to evolve epigrammatic sentiments on the spur of the
moment."
My confusion was so evident that the good dean relented and confessed
that he was imposing upon my ignorance. He made me laugh heartily at
the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly. He was called upon in his
turn, at a large party, and having nothing to aid him in an exercise
to which he was new save the example of his predecessors, lifted his
glass after much writhing and groaning and gave, "The reflection of
the moon in the cawm bosom of the lake!"
At this moment Lady Baird glanced at me, and we all rose to go into
the drawing-room; but on the way from my chair to the door, whither
the earl escorted me, he said gallantly, "I suppose the men in your
country do not take champagne at dinner? I cannot fancy their craving
it when dining beside an American woman!"
That was charming, though he did pay my country a compliment at my
expense. One likes, of course, to have the type recognized as fine; at
the same time his remark would have been more flattering if it had
been less sweeping.
When I remember that he offered me his ancestors, asked me to drive
two hundred and eighty miles, and likened me to champagne, I feel
that, with my heart already occupied and my hand promised, I could
hardly have accomplished more in the course of a single dinner-hour.
VII
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
favorite 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 articles 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
neighbor?"
"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 neighbor," 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 gave 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 the 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 gayety 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,
anyway, that he should be so distressed about international alliances?
One would think that all female America was sighing to lead him to the
altar!"
VIII
Two or three days ago we noted an unusual though subdued air of
excitement at 22, Breadalbane Terrace, where for a week we had been
the sole lodgers. Mrs. Menzies, whom we call Mingess, has returned to
Kilconquhar, which she calls Kinyukkar; Miss Cockburn-Sinclair has
purchased her wedding outfit and gone back to Inverness, where she
will be greeted as Coburn-Sinkler; the Hepburn-Sciennes will be
leaving to-morrow, just as we have learned to pronounce their names;
and the sound of the scrubbing-brush is heard in the land. In corners
where all was clean and spotless before, Mrs. M'Collop is digging with
the broom, and the maiden Boots is following her with a damp cloth.
The stair carpets are hanging on lines in the back garden, and
Susanna, with her cap rakishly on one side, is always to be seen
polishing the stair rods. Whenever we traverse the halls we are
obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given
us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washing-day repasts
in suburban America.
"Is it spring house-cleaning?" I ask Mistress M'Collop.
"Na, na," she replies hurriedly; "it's the meenisters."
On the 19th of May we are a maiden castle no longer. Black coats and
hats ring at the bell, and pass in and out of the different
apartments. The hall table is sprinkled with letters, visiting-cards,
and programmes which seem to have had the alphabet shaken out upon
them, for they bear the names of professors, doctors, reverends, and
very reverends, and fairly bristle with A. M.'s, M. A.'s, A. B.'s, D.
D.'s, and LL. D.'s. The voice of family prayer is lifted up from the
dining-room floor, and Paraphrases and hymns float down the stairs
from above. Their Graces the Lord High Commissioner and the
Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive to-day at Holyrood Palace,
there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland, and to-morrow the Royal Standard will be hoisted
at Edinburgh Castle from reveille to retreat. His Grace will hold a
levee at eleven. Directly His Grace leaves the palace after the levee,
the guard of honor will proceed by the Canongate to receive him on his
arrival at St. Giles' Church, and will then proceed to Assembly Hall
to receive him on his arrival there. The Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons
and the First Battalion Royal Scots will be in attendance, and there
will be unicorns, carricks, pursuivants, heralds, mace-bearers,
ushers, and pages, together with the Purse-bearer, and the Lyon
King-of-Arms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute; for the
palace has awakened and is "mimicking its past."
"_Should the weather be wet the troops will be cloaked at the
discretion of the commanding officers._" They print this instruction
as a matter of form, and of course every man has his mackintosh ready.
The only hope lies in the fact that this is a national function, and
"Queen's weather" is a possibility. The one personage for whom the
Scottish climate will occasionally relax is Her Majesty Queen
Victoria, who for sixty years has exerted a benign influence on
British skies and at least secured sunshine on great parade days. Such
women are all too few!
In this wise enters His Grace the Lord High Commissioner to open the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and on the same day there
arrives by the railway (but traveling first class) the Moderator of
the Church of Scotland, Free, to convene its separate Supreme Courts
in Edinburgh. He will have no Union Jacks, Royal Standards, Dragoons,
bands, or pipers; he will bear his own purse and stay at a hotel; but
when the final procession of all comes, he will probably march beside
His Grace the Lord High Commissioner, and they will talk together, not
of dead-and-gone kingdoms, but of the one at hand, where there are no
more divisions in the ranks, and where all the soldiers are simply
"king's men," marching to victory under the inspiration of a common
watchword.
It is a matter of regret to us that the U. P.'s, the third branch of
Scottish Presbyterianism, could not be holding an Assembly during this
same week, so that we might the more easily decide in which flock we
really belong. 22, Breadalbane Terrace now represents all shades of
religious opinion within the bounds of Presbyterianism. We have an
Elder, a Professor of Biblical Criticism, a Majesty's Chaplain, and
even an ex-Moderator under our roof, and they are equally divided
between the Free and the Established bodies.
Mrs. M'Collop herself is a pillar of the Free Kirk, but she has no
prejudice in lodgers, and says so long as she "mak's her rent she
doesna care aboot their releegious principles." Miss Diggity-Dalgety
is the sole representative of United Presbyterianism in the household,
and she is somewhat gloomy in Assembly time. To belong to a dissenting
body, and yet to cook early and late for the purpose of fattening
one's religious rivals, is doubtless trying to the temper; and then
she asserts that "meenisters are aye tume [empty]."
* * * * *
"You must put away your Scottish ballads and histories now, Salemina,
and keep your Concordance and your umbrella constantly at hand."
This I said as we stood on George IV. Bridge and saw the ministers
glooming down from the Mound in a dense Assembly fog. As the presence
of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed
to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to
the population of Edinburgh is believed to induce rain,--or perhaps I
should say, more rain.
Of course, when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily
resist the infection of disease. Similarly if Scottish skies were not
ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding
it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences
of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as stated to the
Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head
at the time; and she went on to boast of a convention she once
attended in San Francisco, where twenty-six thousand Christian
Endeavorers were unable to dim the California sunshine, though they
stayed ten days.
"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued
to Salemina, "is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of
proper Presbyterianism. Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part
if we should each espouse a different kind; then there would be no
feeling among our Edinburgh friends. And again, what is this 'union'
of which we hear murmurs? Is it religious or political? Is it an echo
of the 1707 Union you explained to us last week, or is it a new one?
What is Disestablishment? What is Disruption? Are they the same thing?
What is the Sustentation Fund? What was the Non-Intrusion Party? What
was the Dundas Despotism? What is the argument at present going on
about taking the Shorter Catechism out of the schools? What is the
Shorter Catechism, anyway,--or at least, what have they left out of
the Longer Catechism to make it shorter,--and is the length of the
Catechism one of the points of difference? Then when we have looked up
Chalmers and Candlish, we can ask the ex-Moderator and the Professor
of Biblical Criticism to tea; separately, of course, lest there should
be ecclesiastical quarrels."
Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established Church, I lean
instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have any
knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a
conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic
associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly
established national church,--or, for that matter, a regularly
established anything,--she gravitates to it by the law of her being.
Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own
minister and native land, are inclined to be flexible. The church that
enters Edinburgh with a marquis and a marchioness representing the
Crown, the church that opens its Assembly with splendid processions
and dignified pageants, the church that dispenses generous hospitality
from Holyrood Palace,--above all, the church that escorts its Lord
High Commissioner from place to place with bands and pipers,--that is
the church to which she pledges her constant presence and enthusiastic
support.