trifling differences of opinion, but in hours of affliction we are as
one flesh. An all-wise Providence sent us Jane Grieve for fear that we
should be too happy in Pettybaw. Plans made in heaven for the
discipline of sinful human flesh are always successful, and this was
no exception.
We had sent a "machine" from the inn to meet her, and when it drew up
at the door we went forward to greet the rosy little Jane of our
fancy. An aged person, wearing a rusty black bonnet and shawl, and
carrying what appeared to be a tin cake-box and a baby's bath-tub,
descended rheumatically from the vehicle and announced herself as Miss
Grieve. She was too old to call by her Christian name, too sensitive
to call by her surname, so Miss Grieve she remained, as announced, to
the end of the chapter, and our rosy little Jane died before she was
actually born. The man took her curious luggage into the kitchen, and
Salemina escorted her thither, while Francesca and I fell into each
other's arms and laughed hysterically.
"Nobody need tell me that she is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's
niece," she whispered, "though she may possibly be somebody's
grandaunt. Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Gummidge?"
Salemina returned in a quarter of an hour, and sank dejectedly on the
sofa.
"Run over to the inn, Francesca," she said, "and order bacon and eggs
at eight-thirty to-morrow morning. Miss Grieve thinks we had better not
breakfast at home until she becomes accustomed to the surroundings."
"Shall we allow her to become accustomed to them?" I questioned.
"She came up from Glasgow to Edinburgh for the day, and went to see
Mrs. M'Collop just as our telegram arrived. She was living with an
'extremely nice family' in Glasgow, and only broke her engagement in
order to try Fifeshire air for the summer; so she will remain with us
as long as she is benefited by the climate."
"Can't we pay her for a month and send her away?"
"How can we? She is Mrs. M'Collop's sister's husband's niece, and we
intend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She has a nice ladylike appearance,
but when she takes her bonnet off she looks seventy years old."
"She ought always to keep it off, then," returned Francesca, "for she
looked eighty with it on. We shall have to soothe her last moments, of
course, and pay her funeral expenses. Did you offer her a cup of tea
and show her the box-bed?"
"Yes; she said she was muckle obleeged to me, but the coals were so
poor and hard she couldna batter them up to start a fire the nicht,
and she would try the box-bed to see if she could sleep in it. I am
glad to remember that it was you who telegraphed for her, Penelope."
"Let there be no recriminations," I responded; "let us stand shoulder
to shoulder in this calamity,--isn't there a story called 'Calamity
Jane?' We might live at the inn, and give her the cottage for a summer
residence, but I utterly refuse to be parted from our cat and the 1602
lintel."
After I have once described Miss Grieve I shall not suffer her to
begloom these pages as she did our young lives. She is so exactly like
her kind in America that she cannot be looked upon as a national type.
Everywhere we go we see fresh, fair-haired, sonsie lassies; why should
we have been visited with this affliction, we who have no courage in a
foreign land to rid ourselves of it?
She appears at the door of the kitchen with some complaint, and stands
there talking to herself in a depressing murmur until she arrives at
the next grievance. Whenever we hear this, which is whenever we are in
the sitting-room, we amuse ourselves by chanting lines of melancholy
poetry which correspond to the sentiments she seems to be uttering. It
is the only way the infliction can be endured, for the sitting-room is
so small we cannot keep the door closed habitually. The effect of this
plan is something like the following:--
_She_. "The range has sic a bad draft I canna mak' the fire draw!"
_We_. "But I'm ower auld for the tears to start,
An' sae the sighs maun blaw!"
_She_. "The clock i' the hall doesna strike. I have to get oot
o' my bed to see the time."
_We_. "The broken hairt it kens
Nae second spring again!"
_She_. "There are not eneuch jugs i' the hoose."
_We_. "I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought,--
In troth I'm like to greet!"
_She_. "The sink drain is na recht."
_We_. "An' it's oh! to win awa', awa',
An' it's oh! to win awa'!"
_She_. "I canna thole a box-bed!"
_We_. "Ay, waukin' O
Waukin' O an' weary.
Sleep I can get nane,
Ay waukin' O!"
_She_. "It's fair insultin' to rent a hoose wi' so few convenience."
_We_. "An' I'm ower auld to fish ony mair,
An' I hinna the chance to droon."
_She_. "The work is fair sickenin' i' this hoose,
an' a' for ane puir body to do by her lane."
_We_. "How can ye chant, ye little birds,
An' I sae weary, fu' o' care?"
_She_. "Ah, but that was a fine family I lived wi' in Glasgy;
an' it's a wearifu' day's work I've had the day."
_We_. "Oh, why was I spared to cry, wae's me!"
_She_. "Why dinna they leave floo'rs i' the garden, makin' sic a
mess i' the hoose wi' 'em? It's not for the knowin' what they
will be after next!"
_We_. "Oh, waly waly up the bank,
And waly waly doon the brae!"
Miss Grieve's plaints never grow less, though we are sometimes at a
loss for appropriate quotations to match them. The poetic
interpolations are introduced merely to show the general spirit of her
conversation. They take the place of her sighs, which are by their
nature unprintable. Many times each day she is wont to sink into one
low chair, and, extending her feet in another, close her eyes and
murmur undistinguishable plaints which come to us in a kind of
rhythmic way. She has such a shaking right hand we have been obliged
to give up coffee and have tea, as the former beverage became too
unsettled on its journey from the kitchen to the breakfast-table. She
says she kens she is a guid cook, though salf-praise is sma'
racommendation (sma' as it is she will get no other!); but we have
little opportunity to test her skill, as she prepares only our
breakfasts of eggs and porridge. Visions of home-made goodies had
danced before our eyes, but as the hall clock doesna strike she is
unable to rise at any exact hour, and as the range draft is bad, and
the coals too hard to batter up wi' a hatchet, we naturally have to
content ourselves with the baker's loaf.
And this is a truthful portrait of "Calamity Jane," our one Pettybaw
grievance.
XVI
"Gae farer up the burn to Habbie's Howe,
Where a' the sweets o' spring an' simmer grow:
Between twa birks, out o'er a little lin,
The water fa's an' mak's a singan din;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses, wi' easy whirls, the bord'ring grass."
_The Gentle Shepherd_.
That is what Peggy says to Jenny in Allan Ramsay's poem, and if you
substitute "Crummylowe" for "Habbie's Howe" in the first line, you
will have a lovely picture of the Farm-Steadin'.
You come to it by turning the corner from the inn, first passing the
cottage where the lady wishes to rent two rooms for fifteen shillings
a week, but will not give much attendance, as she is slightly
asthmatic, and the house is always as clean as it is this minute, and
the view from the window looking out on Pettybaw Bay canna be
surpassed at ony money. Then comes the little house where Will'am
Beattie's sister Mary died in May, and there wasna a bonnier woman in
Fife. Next is the cottage with the pansy garden, where the lady in the
widow's cap takes five o'clock tea in the bay window, and a snug
little supper at eight. She has for the first scones and marmalade,
and her tea is in a small black teapot under a red cozy with a white
muslin cover drawn over it. At eight she has more tea, and generally a
kippered herring, or a bit of cold mutton left from the noon dinner.
We note the changes in her bill of fare as we pass hastily by and feel
admitted quite into the family secrets. Beyond this bay window, which
is so redolent of simple peace and comfort that we long to go in and
sit down, is the cottage with the double white tulips, the cottage
with the collie on the front steps, the doctor's house with the yellow
laburnum tree, and then the house where the Disagreeable Woman lives.
She has a lovely baby, which, to begin with, is somewhat remarkable,
as disagreeable women rarely have babies; or else, having had them,
rapidly lose their disagreeableness,--so rapidly that one has not time
to notice it. The Disagreeable Woman's house is at the end of the row,
and across the road is a wicket gate leading--Where did it lead?--that
was the very point. Along the left, as you lean wistfully over the
gate, there runs a stone wall topped by a green hedge; and on the
right, first furrows of pale fawn, then below, furrows of deeper
brown, and mulberry, and red ploughed earth stretching down to waving
fields of green, and thence to the sea, gray, misty, opalescent,
melting into the pearly white clouds, so that one cannot tell where
sea ends and sky begins.
There is a path between the green hedge and the ploughed field, and it
leads seductively to the farm-steadin'; or we felt that it might thus
lead, if we dared unlatch the wicket gate. Seeing no sign "Private
Way," "Trespassers Not Allowed," or other printed defiance to the
stranger, we were considering the opening of the gate, when we
observed two female figures coming toward us along the path, and
paused until they should come through. It was the Disagreeable Woman
(though we knew it not) and an elderly friend. We accosted the friend,
feeling instinctively that she was framed of softer stuff, and asked
her if the path were a private one. It was a question that had never
met her ear before, and she was too dull or too discreet to deal with
it on the instant. To our amazement, she did not even manage to
falter, "I couldna say."
"Is the path private?" I repeated.
"It is certainly the idea to keep it a little private," said the
Disagreeable Woman, coming into the conversation without being
addressed. "Where do you wish to go?"
"Nowhere in particular. The walk looks so inviting we should like to
see the end."
"It goes only to the Farm, and you can reach that by the highroad; it
is only a half-mile farther. Do you wish to call at the Farm?"
"No, oh no; the path is so very pretty that"--
"Yes, I see; well, I should call it rather private." And with this she
departed; leaving us to stand on the outskirts of paradise, while she
went into her house and stared at us from the window as she played
with the lovely undeserved baby. But that was not the end of the
matter.
We found ourselves there next day, Francesca and I,--Salemina was too
proud,--drawn by an insatiable longing to view the beloved and
forbidden scene. We did not dare to glance at the Disagreeable Woman's
windows, lest our courage should ooze away, so we opened the gate and
stole through into the rather private path.
It was a most lovely path; even if it had not been in a sense
prohibited, it would still have been lovely, simply on its own merits.
There were little gaps in the hedge and the wall, through which we
peered into a daisy-starred pasture, where a white bossy and a herd of
flaxen-haired cows fed on the sweet green grass. The mellow ploughed
earth on the right hand stretched down to the shore-line, and a
plough-boy walked up and down the long, straight furrows whistling "My
Nannie's awa'." Pettybaw is so far removed from the music-halls that
their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its Sylvan shades,
and the herd-laddies and plough-boys still sweeten their labors with
the old classic melodies.
We walked on and on, determined to come every day; and we settled that
if we were accosted by any one, or if our innocent business were
demanded, Francesca should ask, "Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live
here, and has she any new-laid eggs?"
Soon the gates of the Farm appeared in sight. There was a cluster of
buildings, with doves huddling and cooing on the red-tiled
roofs,--dairy-houses, workmen's cottages, comely rows of haystacks
(towering yellow things with peaked tops); a little pond with ducks
and geese chattering together as they paddled about, and for
additional music the trickling of two tiny burns making "a singan din"
as they wimpled through the bushes. A speckle-breasted thrush perched
on a corner of the gray wall and poured his heart out. Overhead there
was a chorus of rooks in the tall trees, but there was no sound of
human voice save that of the plough-laddie whistling "My Nannie's
awa'."
We turned our backs on this darling solitude, and retraced our steps
lingeringly. As we neared the wicket gate again we stood upon a bit of
jutting rock and peered over the wall, sniffing the hawthorn buds with
ecstasy. The white bossy drew closer, treading softly on its daisy
carpet; the wondering cows looked up at us as they peacefully chewed
their cuds; a man in corduroy breeches came from a corner of the
pasture, and with a sharp, narrow hoe rooted out a thistle or two that
had found their way into this sweet feeding-ground. Suddenly we heard
the swish of a dress behind us, and turned, conscience-stricken,
though we had in nothing sinned.
"Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live here?" stammered Francesca like a
parrot.
It was an idiotic time and place for the question. We had certainly
arranged that she should ask it, but something must be left to the
judgment in such cases. Francesca was hanging over a stone wall
regarding a herd of cows in a pasture, and there was no possible
shelter for a Mrs. Macstronachlacher within a quarter of a mile. What
made the remark more unfortunate was the fact that, though she had on
a different dress and bonnet, the person interrogated was the
Disagreeable Woman; but Francesca is particularly slow in discerning
resemblances. She would have gone on mechanically asking for new-laid
eggs, had I not caught her eye and held it sternly. The foe looked at
us suspiciously for a moment (Francesca's hats are not easily
forgotten), and then vanished up the path, to tell the people at
Crummylowe, I suppose, that their grounds were infested by marauding
strangers whose curiosity was manifestly the outgrowth of a republican
government.
As she disappeared in one direction, we walked slowly in the other;
and just as we reached the corner of the pasture where two stone walls
meet, and where a group of oaks gives grateful shade, we heard
children's voices.
"No, no!" cried somebody: "it must be still higher at this end, for
the tower,--this is where the king will sit. Help me with this heavy
one, Rafe. Dandie, mind your foot. Why don't you be making the flag
for the ship?--and do keep the Wrig away from us till we finish
building!"
XVII
"O lang, lang may the ladyes sit
Wi' their face into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand."
_Sir Patrick Spens._
We forced our toes into the crevices of the wall and peeped stealthily
over the top. Two boys of eight or ten years, with two younger
children, were busily engaged in building a castle. A great pile of
stones had been hauled to the spot, evidently for the purpose of
mending the wall, and these were serving as rich material for sport.
The oldest of the company, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy in an Eton
jacket and broad white collar, was obviously commander-in-chief; and
the next in size, whom he called Rafe, was a laddie of eight, in
kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy,
while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little yokels of another sort. The
miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was
worthy of the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed
upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower, the master
builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over
the wall. We were properly abashed and ducked our heads discreetly at
once, but were reassured by hearing him run rapidly toward us,
calling, "Stop, if you please! Have you anything on just now,--are you
busy?"
We answered that we were quite at leisure.
"Then would you mind coming in to help us to play 'Sir Patrick Spens'?
There aren't enough of us to do it nicely."
This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least
misplaced. Playing "Sir Patrick Spens" was exactly in our line, little
as he suspected it.
"Come and help?" I said. "Simply delighted! Do come, Fanny dear. How
can we get over the wall?"
"I'll show you the good broken place!" cried Sir Apple-Cheek; and
following his directions we scrambled through, while Rafe took off his
Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth.
"Hurrah! now it will be something like fun! Do you know 'Sir Patrick
Spens'?"
"Every word of it. Don't you want us to pass an examination before you
allow us in the game?"
"No," he answered gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it,
but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt
Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here
he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've
done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are
trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is
the 'eldern knight,'--you remember him?"
"Certainly; he sat at the king's right knee."
"Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time,
and I the other part, because everybody likes to be him; but there's
nobody left for the 'lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is
the only maiden to sit on the shore, and she always forgets to comb
her hair and weep at the right time."
The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a
Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest) was seated on the grass,
with her fat hands full of pink thyme and white wild woodruff. The sun
shone on her curly flaxen head. She wore a dark blue cotton frock with
white dots, and a short-sleeved pinafore; and though she was utterly
useless from a dramatic point of view, she was the sweetest little
Scotch dumpling I ever looked upon. She had been tried and found
wanting in most of the principal parts of the ballad, but when left
out of the performance altogether she was wont to scream so lustily
that all Crummylowe rushed to her assistance.
"Now let us practice a bit to see if we know what we are going to do,"
said Sir Apple-Cheek. "Rafe, you can be Sir Patrick this time. The
reason why we all like to be Sir Patrick," he explained, turning to
me, "is that the lords o' Noroway say to him,--
'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd,
And a' our Queenis fee;'
and then he answers,--
'Ye lee! ye lee! ye leers loud,
Fu' loudly do ye lee!'
and a lot of splendid things like that. Well, I'll be the king," and
accordingly he began:--
"The King sits in Dunfermline tower,
Drinking the bluid-red wine.
'O whaur will I get a skeely skipper
To sail this new ship o' mine?'"
A dead silence ensued, whereupon the king said testily, "Now, Dandie,
you never remember you're the eldern knight; go on!"
Thus reminded, Dandie recited:--
"O up and spake an eldern knight
Sat at the King's right knee,
'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever sailed the sea.'"
"Now I'll write my letter," said the king, who was endeavoring to make
himself comfortable in his somewhat contracted tower.
"The King has written a braid letter
And sealed it with his hand;
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.
Read the letter out loud, Rafe, and then you'll remember what to do."
"'To Noroway! to Noroway!
To Noroway on the faem!
The King's daughter of Noroway,
'T is thou maun bring her hame,'"
read Rafe.
"Now do the next part!"
"I can't; I'm going to chuck up that next part. I wish you'd do Sir
Pat until it comes to 'Ye lee! ye lee!'"
"No, that won't do, Rafe. We have to mix up everybody else, but it's
too bad to spoil Sir Patrick."
"Well, I'll give him to you, then, and be the king. I don't mind so
much now that we've got such a good tower; and why can't I stop up
there even after the ship sets sail, and look out over the sea with a
telescope? That's the way Elizabeth did the time she was king."
"You can stay till you have to come down and be a dead Scots lord. I'm
not going to lie there as I did last time, with nobody but the Wrig
for a Scots lord, and her forgetting to be dead!"
Sir Apple-Cheek then essayed the hard part "chucked up" by Rafe. It
was rather difficult, I confess, as the first four lines were in
pantomime and required great versatility:--
"The first word that Sir Patrick read,
Fu' loud, loud laughed he;
The neist word that Sir Patrick read,
The tear blinded his e'e."
These conflicting emotions successfully simulated, Sir Patrick
resumed:--
"'O wha is he has dune this deed,
And tauld the King o' me,--
To send us out, at this time o' the year,
To sail upon the sea?'"
Then the king stood up in the unstable tower and shouted his own
orders:--
"'Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,
Our ship maun sail the faem;
The King's daughter o' Noroway,
'Tis we maun fetch her hame.'"
"Can't we rig the ship a little better?" demanded our stage manager at
this juncture. "It isn't half as good as the tower."
Ten minutes' hard work, in which we assisted, produced something a
trifle more nautical and seaworthy than the first ship. The ground
with a few boards spread upon it was the deck. Tarpaulin sheets were
arranged on sticks to represent sails, and we located the vessel so
cleverly that two slender trees shot out of the middle of it and
served as the tall topmasts.
"Now let us make believe that we've hoisted our sails on 'Mononday
morn' and been in Noroway 'weeks but only twae,'" said our leading
man; "and your time has come now," turning to us.
We felt indeed that it had; but plucking up sufficient courage for the
lords o' Noroway, we cried accusingly,--
"'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd,
And a' our Queenis fee!'"
Oh, but Sir Apple-Cheek was glorious as he roared virtuously:--
"'Ye lee! ye lee! ye leers loud,
Fu' loudly do ye lee!
'For I brocht as much white monie
As gane my men and me,
An' I brocht a half-fou o' gude red gowd
Out ower the sea wi' me.
'But betide me weil, betide me wae,
This day I'se leave the shore;
And never spend my King's monie
'Mong Noroway dogs no more.
'Make ready, make ready, my merry men a',
Our gude ship sails the morn.'
Now you be the sailors, please!"
Glad to be anything but Noroway dogs, we recited obediently:--
"'Now, ever alake, my master dear,
I fear a deadly storm!
And if ye gang to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm.'"
We added much to the effect of this stanza by flinging ourselves on
the turf and embracing Sir Patrick's knees, with which touch of
melodrama he was enchanted.
Then came a storm so terrible that I can hardly trust myself to
describe its fury. The entire _corps dramatique_ personated the
elements, and tore the gallant ship in twain, while Sir Patrick
shouted in the teeth of the gale,--
"'O whaur will I get a gude sailor
To tak' my helm in hand,
Till I get up to the tall topmast
To see if I can spy land?'"
I knew the words a trifle better than Francesca, and thus succeeded in
forestalling her as the fortunate hero:--
"'O here am I, a sailor gude,
To tak' the helm in hand,
Till you go up to the tall topmast;
But I fear ye'll ne'er spy land.'"
And the heroic sailor was right, for
"He hadna gone a step, a step,
A step but only ane,
When a bout flew out o' our goodly ship,
And the saut sea it came in."
Then we fetched a web o' the silken claith, and anither o' the twine,
as our captain bade us; we wapped them into our ship's side and letna
the sea come in; but in vain, in vain. Laith were the gude Scots lords
to weet their cork-heeled shune, but they did, and wat their hats
abune; for the ship sank in spite of their despairing efforts,
"And mony was the gude lord's son
That never mair cam' hame."
Francesca and I were now obliged to creep from under the tarpaulins
and personate the disheveled ladies on the strand.
"Will your hair come down?" asked the manager gravely.
"It will and shall," we rejoined; and it did.
"The ladies wrang their fingers white,
The maidens tore their hair."
"Do tear your hair, Jessie! It's the only thing you have to do, and
you never do it on time!"
The Wrig made ready to howl with offended pride, but we soothed her,
and she tore her yellow curls with her chubby hands.
"And lang, lang may the maidens sit
Wi' their gowd kaims i' their hair,
A waitin' for their ain dear luves,
For them they'll see nae mair."