fair American, clad in a kilt and mutch, decked in heather and scones,
and brandishing a claymore, will live forever in my memory. Don't clip
the wings of her imagination! You will be telling her soon that one
doesn't tie one's hair with thistles, nor couple collops with
cairngorms."
Somebody sent Francesca a great bunch of yellow broom, late that
afternoon. There was no name in the box, she said, but at night she
wore the odorous tips in the bosom of her black dinner-gown, and
standing erect in her dark hair like golden aigrettes.
When she came into my room to say good-night, she laid the pretty
frock in one of my trunks, which was to be filled with the garments of
fashionable society and left behind in Edinburgh. The next moment I
chanced to look on the floor, and discovered a little card, a bent
card, with two lines written on it:--
"_Better lo'ed ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again?_"
We have received many invitations in that handwriting. I know it well,
and so does Francesca, though it is blurred; and the reason for this,
according to my way of thinking, is that it has been lying next the
moist stems of flowers, and, unless I do her wrong, very near to
somebody's warm heart as well.
I will not betray her to Salemina, even to gain a victory over that
blind and deaf but much beloved woman. How could I, with my heart
beating high at the thought of seeing my ain dear laddie before many
days!
"Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness:
It winna let a puir body
Gang aboot his business."
PART SECOND. IN THE COUNTRY
XIV
"Now she's cast aff her bonny shoon
Made o' gilded leather,
And she's put on her Hieland brogues
To skip amang the heather.
And she's cast aff her bonny goon
Made o' the silk and satin,
And she's put on a tartan plaid
To row amang the braken."
_Lizzie Baillie_.
We are in the East Neuk o' Fife; we are in Pettybaw; we are neither
boarders nor lodgers; we are residents, inhabitants, householders, and
we live (live, mind you) in a wee theekit hoosie in the old loaning.
Words fail to tell you how absolutely Scotch we are and how blissfully
happy. It is a happiness, I assure you, achieved through great
tribulation. Salemina and I traveled many miles in railway trains, and
many in various other sorts of wheeled vehicles, while the ideal ever
beckoned us onward. I was determined to find a romantic lodging,
Salemina a comfortable one, and this special combination of virtues is
next to impossible, as every one knows. Linghurst was too much of a
town; Bonnie Craig had no respectable inn; Whinnybrae was struggling
to be a watering-place; Broomlea had no golf course within ten miles,
and we intended to go back to our native land and win silver goblets
in mixed foursomes; the "new toun o' Fairloch" (which looked centuries
old) was delightful, but we could not find apartments there; Pinkie
Leith was nice, but they were tearing up the "fore street" and laying
drain-pipes in it. Strathdee had been highly recommended, but it
rained when we were in Strathdee, and nobody can deliberately settle
in a place where it rains during the process of deliberation. No train
left this moist and dripping hamlet for three hours, so we took a
covered trap and drove onward in melancholy mood. Suddenly the clouds
lifted and the rain ceased; the driver thought we should be having
settled weather now, and put back the top of the carriage, saying
meanwhile that it was a verra dry simmer this year, and that the crops
sairly needed shoo'rs.
"Of course, if there is any district in Scotland where for any reason
droughts are possible, that is where we wish to settle," I whispered
to Salemina; "though, so far as I can see, the Strathdee crops are up
to their knees in mud. Here is another wee village. What is this
place, driver?"
"Pettybaw, mam; a fine toun!"
"Will there be apartments to let there?"
"I couldna say, mam."
"Susanna Crum's father! How curious that he should live here!" I
murmured; and at this moment the sun came out, and shone full, or at
least almost full, on our future home.
"Pettybaw! _Petit bois_, I suppose," said Salemina; "and there, to be
sure, it is,--the 'little wood' yonder."
We drove to the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, and,
alighting, dismissed the driver. We had still three good hours of
daylight, although it was five o'clock, and we refreshed ourselves
with a delicious cup of tea before looking for lodgings. We consulted
the greengrocer, the baker, and the flesher, about furnished
apartments, and started on our quest, not regarding the little posting
establishment as a possibility. Apartments we found to be very scarce,
and in one or two places that were quite suitable the landlady refused
to do any cooking. We wandered from house to house, the sun shining
brighter and brighter, and Pettybaw looking lovelier and lovelier; and
as we were refused shelter again and again, we grew more and more
enamored, as is the manner of human kind. The blue sea sparkled, and
Pettybaw Sands gleamed white a mile or two in the distance, the pretty
stone church raised its carved spire from the green trees, the manse
next door was hidden in vines, the sheep lay close to the gray stone
walls and the young lambs nestled close beside them, while the song of
the burn, tinkling merrily down the glade on the edge of which we
stood, and the cawing of the rooks in the little wood, were the only
sounds to be heard.
Salemina, under the influence of this sylvan solitude, nobly declared
that she could and would do without a set bath-tub, and proposed
building a cabin and living near to nature's heart.
"I think, on the whole, we should be more comfortable living near to
the inn-keeper's heart," I answered. "Let us go back there and pass
the night, trying thus the bed and breakfast, with a view to seeing
what they are like,--though they did say in Edinburgh that nobody
thinks of living in these wayside hostelries."
Back we went, accordingly, and after ordering dinner came out and
strolled idly up the main street. A small sign in the draper's window,
heretofore overlooked, caught our eye. "House and Garden To Let.
Inquire Within." Inquiring within with all possible speed, we found
the draper selling winseys, the draper's assistant tidying the
ribbon-box, the draper's wife sewing in one corner, and the draper's
baby playing on the clean floor. We were impressed favorably, and
entered into negotiations without delay.
"The house will be in the loaning; do you mind, ma'am?" asked the
draper. (We have long since discovered that this use of the verb is a
bequest from the Gaelic, in which there is no present tense. Man never
is, but always to be blessed, in that language, which in this
particular is not unlike old-fashioned Calvinism.)
We went out of the back door and down the green loaning, until we came
to the wee stone cottage in which the draper himself lives most of the
year, retiring for the warmer months to the back of his shop, and
eking out a comfortable income by renting his hearthstone to the
summer visitor.
The thatched roof on the wing that formed the kitchen attracted my
artist's eye, and we went in to examine the interior, which we found
surprisingly attractive. There was a tiny sitting-room, with a
fireplace and a microscopic piano; a dining-room adorned with
portraits of relatives who looked nervous when they met my eye, for
they knew that they would be turned face to the wall on the morrow;
four bedrooms, a kitchen, and a back garden so filled with vegetables
and flowers that we exclaimed with astonishment and admiration.
"But we cannot keep house in Scotland," objected Salemina. "Think of
the care! And what about the servants?"
"Why not eat at the inn?" I suggested. "Think of living in a real
loaning, Salemina! Look at the stone floor in the kitchen, and the
adorable stuffy box-bed in the wall! Look at the bust of Sir Walter in
the hall, and the chromo of Melrose Abbey by moonlight! Look at the
lintel over the front door, with a ship, moon, stars, and 1602 carved
in the stone! What is food to all this?"
Salemina agreed that it was hardly worth considering; and in truth so
many landladies had refused to receive her as a tenant that day, that
her spirits were rather low, and she was uncommonly flexible.
"It is the lintel and the back garden that rents the hoose," remarked
the draper complacently in broad Scotch that I cannot reproduce. He is
a house-agent as well as a draper, and went on to tell us that when he
had a cottage he could rent in no other way he planted plenty of
creepers in front of it. "The baker's hoose is no sae bonnie," he
said, "and the linen and cutlery verra scanty, but there is a yellow
laburnum growin' by the door: the leddies see that, and forget to ask
aboot the linen. It depends a good bit on the weather, too; it is easy
to let a hoose when the sun shines upon it."
"We hardly dare undertake regular housekeeping," I said; "do your
tenants ever take meals at the inn?"
"I couldna say, mam." (Dear, dear, the Crums are a large family!)
"If we did that, we should still need a servant to keep the house
tidy," said Salemina, as we walked away. "Perhaps housemaids are to be
had, though not nearer than Edinburgh, I fancy."
This gave me an idea, and I slipped over to the post-office while
Salemina was preparing for dinner, and dispatched a telegram to Mrs.
M'Collop at Breadalbane Terrace, asking her if she could send a
reliable general servant to us, capable of cooking simple breakfasts
and caring for a house.
We had scarcely finished our Scotch broth, fried haddies,
mutton-chops, and rhubarb tart when I received an answer from Mrs.
M'Collop to the effect that her sister's husband's niece, Jane Grieve,
could join us on the morrow if desired. The relationship was an
interesting fact, though we scarcely thought the information worth the
additional threepence we paid for it in the telegram; however, Mrs.
M'Collop's comfortable assurance, together with the quality of the
rhubarb tart and mutton-chops, brought us to a decision. Before going
to sleep we rented the draper's house, named it Bide-a-Wee Cottage,
engaged daily luncheons and dinners for three persons at the Pettybaw
Inn and Posting Establishment, telegraphed to Edinburgh for Jane
Grieve, to Callender for Francesca, and dispatched a letter to Paris
for Mr. Beresford, telling him we had taken a "wee theekit hoosie" and
that the "yett was ajee" whenever he chose to come.
"Possibly it would have been wiser not to send for them until we were
settled," I said reflectively. "Jane Grieve may not prove a suitable
person."
"The name somehow sounds too young and inexperienced," observed
Salemina, "and what association have I with the phrase 'sister's
husband's niece'?"
"You have heard me quote Lewis Carroll's verse, perhaps:--
'He thought he saw a buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece;
He looked again and found it was
His sister's husband's niece:
"Unless you leave the house," he said,
"I'll send for the police!"'
The only thing that troubles me," I went on, "is the question of
Willie Beresford's place of residence. He expects to be somewhere
within easy walking or cycling distance,--four or five miles at
most."
"He won't be desolate even if he doesn't have a thatched roof, a pansy
garden, and a blossoming shrub," said Salemina sleepily, for our
business arrangements and discussions had lasted well into the
evening. "What he will want is a lodging where he can have frequent
sight and speech of you. How I dread him! How I resent his sharing of
you with us! I don't know why I use the word 'sharing,' forsooth!
There is nothing half so fair and just in his majesty's greedy mind.
Well, it's the way of the world; only it is odd, with the universe of
women to choose from, that he must needs take you. Strathdee seems the
most desirable place for him, if he has a mackintosh and rubber boots.
Inchcaldy is another town near here that we didn't see at all,--that
might do; the draper's wife says that we can send fine linen to the
laundry there."
"Inchcaldy? Oh yes, I think we heard of it in Edinburgh--at least I
have some association with the name: it has a fine golf course, I
believe, and very likely we ought to have looked at it, though for my
part I have no regrets. Nothing can equal Pettybaw; and I am so
pleased to be a Scottish householder! Aren't we just like Bessie Bell
and Mary Gray?
'They were twa bonnie lassies;
They biggit a bower on yon burnbrae,
An' theekit it ower wi' rashes.'
Think of our stone-floored kitchen, Salemina! Think of the real
box-bed in the wall for little Jane Grieve! She will have red-gold
hair, blue eyes, and a pink cotton gown. Think of our own cat! Think
how Francesca will admire the 1602 lintel! Think of our back garden,
with our own 'neeps' and vegetable marrows growing in it! Think how
they will envy us at home when they learn that we have settled down
into Scottish yeowomen!
'It's oh, for a patch of land!
It's oh, for a patch of land!
Of all the blessings tongue can name,
There's nane like a patch of land!'
Think of Willie coming to step on the floor and look at the bed and
stroke the cat and covet the lintel and walk in the garden and weed
the turnips and pluck the marrows that grow by our ain wee theekit
hoosie!"
"Penelope, you appear slightly intoxicated! Do close the window and
come to bed."
"I am intoxicated with the caller air of Pettybaw," I rejoined,
leaning on the window-sill and looking at the stars, while I thought:
"Edinburgh was beautiful; it is the most beautiful gray city in the
world; it lacked one thing only to make it perfect, and Pettybaw will
have that before many moons.
'Oh, Willie's rare an' Willie's fair
An' Willie's wondrous bonny;
An' Willie's hecht to marry me
Gin e'er he marries ony.
'O gentle wind that bloweth south,
From where my love repaireth,
Convey a word from his dear mouth,
An' tell me how he fareth.'"
XV
"Gae tak' awa' the china plates,
Gae tak' them far frae me;
And bring to me a wooden dish,
It's that I'm best used wi'.
And tak' awa' thae siller spoons
The like I ne'er did see,
And bring to me the horn cutties,
They're good eneugh for me."
_Earl Richard's Wedding_.
The next day was one of the most cheerful and one of the most
fatiguing that I ever spent. Salemina and I moved every article of
furniture in our wee theekit hoosie from the place where it originally
stood to another and a better place: arguing, of course, over the
precise spot it should occupy, which was generally upstairs if the
thing were already down, or downstairs if it were already up. We hid
all the more hideous ornaments of the draper's wife, and folded away
her most objectionable tidies and table-covers, replacing them with
our own pretty draperies. There were only two pictures in the
sitting-room, and as an artist I would not have parted with them for
worlds. The first was The Life of a Fireman, which could only remind
one of the explosion of a mammoth tomato, and the other was The Spirit
of Poetry Calling Burns from the Plough. Burns wore white
knee-breeches, military boots, a splendid waistcoat with lace ruffles,
and carried a cocked hat. To have been so dressed he must have known
the Spirit was intending to come. The plough-horse was a magnificent
Arabian, whose tail swept the freshly furrowed earth, while the Spirit
of Poetry was issuing from a practicable wigwam on the left, and was a
lady of such ample dimensions that no poet would have dared say "no"
when she called him.
The dining-room was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's
relations and the draper's wife's relations; all uniformly ugly. (It
seems strange that married couples having the least beauty to bequeath
to their offspring should persist in having the largest families.)
These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to remove, so we obscured
them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only breakfasted in
the room, and the morning meal is easily digested when one lives in
the open air. We arranged flowers everywhere, and bought potted plants
at a little nursery hard by. We apportioned the bedrooms, giving
Francesca the hardest bed,--as she is the youngest, and wasn't here to
choose,--me the next hardest, and Salemina the best; Francesca the
largest looking-glass and wardrobe, me the best view, and Salemina the
biggest bath. We bought housekeeping stores, distributing our
patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and
dusters from the rival drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the
baker, milk and cream from the plumber, who keeps three cows,
interviewed the flesher about chops; in fact, no young couple facing
love in a cottage ever had a busier or happier time than we; and at
sundown, when Francesca arrived, we were in the pink of order,
standing under our own lintel, ready to welcome her to Pettybaw. As to
being strangers in a strange land, we had a bowing acquaintance with
everybody on the main street of the tiny village, and were on terms of
considerable intimacy with half a dozen families, including dogs and
babies.
Francesca was delighted with everything, from the station (Pettybaw
Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name, which she thought as
perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a
"tirling-pin," that old-time precursor of knockers and bells, at an
antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at once,
taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and
the draper's wife ran down the loaning to see if we were in need of
anything. The twisted bar of iron stands out from the door and the
ring is drawn up and down over a series of nicks, making a rasping
noise. The lovers and ghaists in the old ballads always "tirled at the
pin," you remember; that is, touched it gently.
Francesca brought us letters from Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in
opening Willie's, to learn that he begged us to find a place in
Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as convenient; for in
that case he could accept an invitation he had just received to visit
his friend Robin Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.
"It is not the visit at the castle I wish so much, you may be sure,"
he wrote, "as the fact that Lady Ardmore will make everything pleasant
for you. You will like my friend Robin Anstruther, who is Lady
Ardmore's youngest brother, and who is going to her to be nursed and
coddled after a baddish accident in the hunting-field. He is very
sweet-tempered, and will get on well with Francesca"--
"I don't see the connection," rudely interrupted that spirited young
person.
"I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had
in Edinburgh; but if my remembrance serves me, she always enrolls a
goodly number of victims, whether she has any immediate use for them
or not."
"Mr. Beresford's manners have not been improved by his residence in
Paris," observed Francesca, with resentment in her tone and delight in
her eye.
"Mr. Beresford's manners are always perfect," said Salemina loyally,
"and I have no doubt that this visit to Lady Ardmore will be extremely
pleasant for him, though very embarrassing to us. If we are thrown
into forced intimacy with a castle" (Salemina spoke of it as if it had
fangs and a lashing tail), "what shall we do in this draper's hut?"
"Salemina!" I expostulated, "the bears will devour you as they did the
ungrateful child in the fairy-tale. I wonder at your daring to use the
word 'hut' in connection with our wee theekit hoosie!"
"They will never understand that we are doing all this for the novelty
of it," she objected. "The Scottish nobility and gentry probably never
think of renting a house for a joke. Imagine Lord and Lady Ardmore,
the young Ardmores, Robin Anstruther, and Willie Beresford calling
upon us in this sitting-room! We ourselves would have to sit in the
hall and talk in through the doorway."
"All will be well," Francesca assured her soothingly. "We shall be
pardoned much because we are Americans, and will not be expected to
know any better. Besides, the gifted Miss Hamilton is an artist, and
that covers a multitude of sins against conventionality. When the
castle people 'tirl at the pin,' I will appear as the maid, if you
like, following your example at Mrs. Bobby's cottage in Belvern,
Pen."
"And it isn't as if there were many houses to choose from, Salemina,
nor as if Bide-a-Wee Cottage were cheap," I continued. "Think of the
rent we pay and keep your head high. Remember that the draper's wife
says there is nothing half so comfortable in Inchcaldy, although that
is twice as large a town."
"_Inchcaldy!_" ejaculated Francesca, sitting down heavily upon the
sofa and staring at me.
"Inchcaldy, my dear,--spelled _caldy_, but pronounced _cawdy_; the
town where you are to take your nonsensical little fripperies to be
laundered."
"Where is Inchcaldy? How far away?"
"About five miles, I believe, but a lovely road."
"Well," she exclaimed bitterly, "of course Scotland is a small,
insignificant country; but, tiny as it is, it presents some liberty of
choice, and why you need have pitched upon Pettybaw, and brought me
here, when it is only five miles from Inchcaldy, and a lovely road
besides, is more than I can understand!"
"In what way has Inchcaldy been so unhappy as to offend you?" I
asked.
"It has not offended me, save that it chances to be Ronald Macdonald's
parish,--that is all."
"Ronald Macdonald's parish!" we repeated automatically.
"Certainly,--you must have heard him mention Inchcaldy; and how queer
he will think it that I have come to Pettybaw, under all the
circumstances!"
"We do not know 'all the circumstances,'" quoted Salemina somewhat
haughtily; "and you must remember, my dear, that our opportunities for
speech with Mr. Macdonald have been very rare when you were present.
For my part, I was always in such a tremor of anxiety during his
visits lest one or both of you should descend to blows that I remember
no details of his conversation. Besides, we did not choose Pettybaw;
we discovered it by chance as we were driving from Strathdee to St.
Rules. How were we to know that it was near this fatal Inchcaldy? If
you think it best, we will hold no communication with the place, and
Mr. Macdonald need never know you are here."
I thought Francesca looked rather startled at this proposition. At all
events she said hastily, "Oh well, let it go; we could not avoid each
other long, anyway, though it is very awkward, of course; you see, we
did not part friends."
"I thought I had never seen you on more cordial terms," remarked
Salemina.
"But you weren't there," answered Francesca unguardedly.
"Weren't where?"
"Weren't there."
"Where?"
"At the station."
"What station?"
"The station in Edinburgh from which I started for the Highlands."
"You never said that he came to see you off."
"The matter was too unimportant for notice; and the more I think of
his being here, the less I mind it, after all; and so, dull care,
begone! When I first meet him on the sands or in the loaning, I shall
say, 'Dear me, is it Mr. Macdonald! What brought you to our quiet
hamlet?' (I shall put the responsibility on him, you know.) 'That is
the worst of these small countries,--fowk are aye i' the gait! When we
part forever in America, we are able to stay parted, if we wish.' Then
he will say, 'Quite so, quite so; but I suppose even you, Miss Monroe,
will allow that a minister may not move his church to please a lady.'
'Certainly not,' I shall reply, 'eespecially when it is Estaiblished!'
Then he will laugh, and we shall be better friends for a few moments;
and then I shall tell him my latest story about the Scotchman who
prayed, 'Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only
show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.'"
Salemina moaned at the delightful prospect opening before us, while I
went to the piano and caroled impersonally:--
"Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,
And leave my love behind me?
Why did I venture to the north
With one that did not mind me?
I'm sure I've seen a better limb
And twenty better faces;
But still my mind it runs on him
When I am at the races!"
Francesca left the room at this, and closed the door behind her with
such energy that the bust of Sir Walter rocked on the hall shelf.
Running upstairs she locked herself in her bedroom, and came down
again only to help us receive Jane Grieve, who arrived at eight
o'clock.