Siddons.
"Splendid! Grand!" cried Sir Patrick, as he stretched himself fifty
fathoms below the imaginary surface, and gave explicit ante-mortem
directions to the other Scots lords to spread themselves out in like
manner.
"Half ower, half ower to Aberdour,
'T is fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet."
"Oh, it is grand!" he repeated jubilantly. "If I could only be the
king and see it all from Dunfermline tower! Could you be Sir Patrick
once, do you think, now that I have shown you how?" he asked
Francesca.
"Indeed I could!" she replied, glowing with excitement (and small
wonder) at being chosen for the principal role.
"The only trouble is that you do look awfully like a girl in that
white frock."
Francesca appeared rather ashamed at her natural disqualifications for
the part of Sir Patrick. "If I had only worn my long black cloak!" she
sighed.
"Oh, I have an idea!" cried the boy. "Hand her the minister's gown
from the hedge, Rafe. You see, Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe lent us
this old gown for a sail; she's doing something to a new one, and this
was her pattern."
Francesca slipped it on over her white serge, and the Pettybaw parson
should have seen her with the long veil of her dark locks floating
over his ministerial garment.
"It seems a pity to put up your hair," said the stage manager
critically, "because you look so jolly and wild with it down, but I
suppose you must; and will you have Rafe's bonnet?"
Yes, she would have Rafe's bonnet; and when she perched it on the side
of her head and paced the deck restlessly, while the black gown
floated behind in the breeze, we all cheered with enthusiasm, and,
having rebuilt the ship, began the play again from the moment of the
gale. The wreck was more horribly realistic than ever, this time,
because of our rehearsal; and when I crawled from under the masts and
sails to seat myself on the beach with the Wrig, I had scarcely
strength enough to remove the cooky from her hand and set her
a-combing her curly locks.
When our new Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell
with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth,
the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard
pillow of Jessie's wild flowers.
"Oh, it is fine, that part; but from here is where it always goes
wrong!" cried the king from the castle tower. "It's too bad to take
the maidens away from the strand where they look so bonnie, and Rafe
is splendid as the gude sailor, but Dandie looks so silly as one
little dead Scots lord; if we only had one more person, young or old,
if he was ever so stupid!"
"_Would I do?_"
This unexpected offer came from behind one of the trees that served as
topmasts, and at the same moment there issued from that delightfully
secluded retreat Ronald Macdonald, in knickerbockers and a golf cap.
Suddenly as this apparition came, there was no lack of welcome on the
children's part. They shouted his name in glee, embraced his legs, and
pulled him about like affectionate young bears. Confusion reigned for
a moment, while Sir Patrick rose from her sea grave all in a mist of
floating hair, from which hung impromptu garlands of pink thyme and
green grasses.
"Allow me to do the honors, please, Jamie," said Mr. Macdonald, when
he could escape from the children's clutches. "Have you been properly
presented? I suppose not. Ladies, the young Master of Rowardennan.
Jamie, Miss Hamilton and Miss Monroe from the United States of
America." Sir Apple-Cheek bowed respectfully. "Let me present the
Honorable Ralph Ardmore, also from the castle, together with Dandie
Dinmont and the Wrig from Crummylowe. Sir Patrick, it is indeed a
pleasure to see you again. Must you take off my gown? I had thought it
was past use, but it never looked so well before."
"_Your_ gown?"
The counterfeit presentment of Sir Patrick vanished as the long
drapery flew to the hedge whence it came, and there remained only an
offended young goddess, who swung her dark mane tempestuously to one
side, plaited it in a thick braid, tossed it back again over her white
serge shoulder, and crowded on her sailor hat with unnecessary
vehemence.
"Yes, _my_ gown; whose else could you more appropriately borrow, pray?
Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe presses, sponges, and darns my bachelor
wardrobe, but I confess I never suspected that she rented it out for
theatrical purposes. I have been calling upon you in Pettybaw; Lady
Ardmore was there at the same time. Finding but one of the three
American Graces at home, I stayed a few moments only, and am now
returning to Inchcaldy by way of Crummylowe." Here he plucked the gown
off the hedge and folded it carefully.
"Can't we keep it for a sail, Mr. Macdonald?" pleaded Jamie. "Mistress
Ogilvie said it wasn't any more good."
"When Mistress Ogilvie made that remark," replied the Reverend Ronald,
"she had no idea that it would ever touch the shoulders of the
martyred Sir Patrick Spens. Now I happen to love"--
Francesca hung out a scarlet flag in each cheek, and I was about to
say, "Don't mind me!" when he continued:--
"As I was saying, I happen to love 'Sir Patrick Spens,'--it is my
favorite ballad; so, with your permission, I will take the gown, and
you can find something less valuable for a sail!"
I could never understand just why Francesca was so annoyed at being
discovered in our innocent game. Of course she was prone on Mother
Earth and her tresses were much disheveled, but she looked lovely,
after all, in comparison with me, the humble "supe" and
lightning-change artist; yet I kept my temper,--at least I kept it
until the Reverend Ronald observed, after escorting us through the gap
in the wall, "By the way, Miss Hamilton, there was a gentleman from
Paris at your cottage, and he is walking down the road to meet you."
Walking down the road to meet me, forsooth! Have ministers no brains?
The Reverend Mr. Macdonald had wasted five good minutes with his
observations, introductions, explanations, felicitations, and
adorations, and meantime, regardez-moi, messieurs et mesdames, s'il
vous plait! I have been a Noroway dog, a ship-builder, and a gallant
sailorman; I have been a gurly sea and a towering gale; I have crawled
from beneath broken anchors, topsails, and mizzenmasts to a strand
where I have been a suffering lady plying a gowd kaim. My skirt of
blue drill has been twisted about my person until it trails in front;
my collar is wilted, my cravat untied; I have lost a stud and a
sleeve-link; my hair is in a tangled mass, my face is scarlet and
dusty--and a gentleman from Paris is walking down the road to meet
me!
XVIII
"There were three ladies in a hall--
With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay,
There came a lord among them all--
As the primrose spreads so sweetly."
_The Cruel Brother_.
Willie Beresford has come to Pettybaw, and that Arcadian village has
received the last touch that makes it Paradise.
We are exploring the neighborhood together, and whichever path we take
we think it lovelier than the one before. This morning we drove to
Pettybaw Sands, Francesca and Salemina following by the footpath and
meeting us on the shore. It is all so enchantingly fresh and green on
one of these rare bright days: the trig lass bleaching her "claes" on
the grass by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild
partridges whirring about in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean
straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton
joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages, and the gardens with rows of
currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests
jam and tart in every delicious globule. It is a love-colored
landscape, we know it full well; and nothing in the fair world about
us is half as beautiful as what we see in each other's eyes. Ah, the
memories of these first golden mornings together after our long
separation. I shall sprinkle them with lavender and lay them away in
that dim chamber of the heart where we keep precious things. We all
know the chamber. It is fragrant with other hidden treasures, for all
of them are sweet, though some are sad. This is the reason why we put
a finger on the lip and say "Hush," if we open the door and allow any
one to peep in.
We tied the pony by the wayside and alighted: Willie to gather some
sprays of the pink veronica and blue speedwell, I to sit on an old
bench and watch him in happy idleness. The "white-blossomed slaes"
sweetened the air, and the distant hills were gay with golden whin and
broom, or flushed with the purply-red of the bell heather.
We heard the note of the cushats from a neighboring bush. They used to
build their nests on the ground, so the story goes, but the cows
trampled them. Now they are wiser and build higher, and their cry is
supposed to be a derisive one, directed to their ancient enemies,
"Come noo, Coo, Coo! Come noo!"
A hedgehog crept stealthily along the ground, and at a sudden sound
curled himself up like a wee brown bear. There were women working in
the fields near by,--a strange sight to our eyes at first, but nothing
unusual here, where many of them are employed on the farms all the
year round, sowing, weeding, planting, even ploughing in the spring,
and in winter working at threshing or in the granary.
An old man, leaning on his staff, came tottering feebly along, and
sank down on the bench beside me. He was dirty, ragged, unkempt, and
feeble, but quite sober, and pathetically anxious for human sympathy.
"I'm achty-sax year auld," he maundered, apropos of nothing,
"achty-sax year auld. I've seen five lairds o' Pettybaw, sax placed
meenisters, an' seeven doctors. I was a mason an' a stoot mon i' thae
days, but it's a meeserable life now. Wife deid, bairns deid! I sit by
my lane, an' smoke my pipe, wi' naebody to gi'e me a sup o' water.
Achty-sax is ower auld for a mon,--ower auld."
These are the sharp contrasts of life one cannot bear to face when one
is young and happy. Willie gave him a half-crown and some tobacco for
his pipe, and when the pony trotted off briskly, and we left the
shrunken figure alone on his bench as he was lonely in his life, we
kissed each other and pledged ourselves to look after him as long as
we remain in Pettybaw; for what is love worth if it does not kindle
the flames of spirit, open the gates of feeling, and widen the heart
to shelter all the little loves and great loves that crave
admittance?
As we neared the tiny fishing-village on the sands we met a fishwife
brave in her short skirt and eight petticoats, the basket with its two
hundred pound weight on her head, and the auld wife herself knitting
placidly as she walked along. They look superbly strong, these women;
but, to be sure, the "weak anes dee," as one of them told me.
There was an air of bustle about the little quay,--
"That joyfu' din when the boats come in,
When the boats come in sae early;
When the lift is blue an' the herring-nets fu',
And the sun glints in a' things rarely."
The silvery shoals of fish no longer come so near the shore as they
used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan's had its
tongue tied when the "draive" was off the coast, lest its knell should
frighten away the shining myriads of the deep.
We climbed the shoulder of a great green cliff until we could sit on
the rugged rocks at the top and overlook the sea. The bluff is well
named Nirly Scaur, and a wild, desolate spot it is, with gray
lichen-clad boulders and stunted heather on its summit. In a storm
here, the wind buffets and slashes and scourges one like invisible
whips, and below, the sea churns itself into foaming waves, driving
its "infinite squadrons of wild white horses" eternally toward the
shore. It was calm and blue to-day, and no sound disturbed the quiet
save the incessant shriek and scream of the rock birds, the
kittiwakes, black-headed gulls, and guillemots that live on the sides
of these high, sheer craigs. Here the mother guillemot lays her single
egg, and here, on these narrow shelves of precipitous rock, she holds
it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging
body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies
down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the
education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan
principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward
hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or
swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties,
exposures, and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots keep up
a ceaseless clang of excited conversation, a very riot and wrangle of
altercation and argument which the circumstances seem to warrant. The
prospective father is obliged to take turns with the prospective
mother and hold the one precious egg on the rock while she goes for a
fly, a swim, a bite, and a sup. As there are five hundred other
parents on the same rock, and the eggs look to be only a couple of
inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we
should find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots
die of nervous prostration.
Willie and I interpreted the clamor somewhat as follows:--
[_Between parent birds._]
"I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don't
be clumsy! Wait a minute, I'm not ready. _I'm not ready, I tell you!_
NOW!!"
[_Between rival mothers_.]
"Your egg is so close to mine that I can't breathe"--
"Move your egg, then, I can't move mine!"
"You're sitting so close, I can't stretch my wings."
"Neither can I. You've got as much room as I have."
"I shall tumble if you crowd me."
"Go ahead and tumble, then! There is plenty of room in the sea."
[_From one father to another, ceremoniously._]
"Pardon me, but I am afraid I shoved your wife off the rock last
night."
"Don't mention it. I remember I shoved off your wife's mother last
year."
We walked among the tiny whitewashed low-roofed cots, each with its
silver-skinned fishes tacked invitingly against the door-frame to dry,
until we came to my favorite, the corner cottage in the row. It has
beautiful narrow garden strips in front,--solid patches of color in
sweet gillyflower bushes, from which the kindly housewife plucked a
nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls "granny's mutches;" and
indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns,
ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box
of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence.
Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near
him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot
high, perhaps. We did not recognize the head at once, and asked the
little woman who it was.
"Homer, the graund Greek poet," she answered cheerily; "an' I'm to
have anither o' Burns, as tall as Homer, when my daughter comes hame
frae E'nbro'."
If the shade of Homer keeps account of his earthly triumphs, I think
he is proud of his place in that humble Scotchwoman's gillyflower
garden, with his head under the drooping petals of granny's white
mutches.
What do you think her "mon" is called in the village? John o' Mary!
But he is not alone in his meekness, for there are Jock o' Meg, Willie
o' Janet, Jem o' Tibby, and a dozen others. These primitive
fishing-villages are the places where all the advanced women ought to
congregate, for the wife is head of the house; the accountant, the
treasurer, the auditor, the chancellor of the exchequer; and though
her husband does catch the fish for her to sell, that is accounted
apparently as a detail too trivial for notice.
When we passed Mary's cottage, on our way to the sands next day,
Burns's head had been accidentally broken off by the children, and we
felt as though we had lost a friend; but Scotch thrift, and loyalty to
the dear Ploughman Poet, came to the rescue, and when we returned,
Robbie's plaster head had been glued to his body. He smiled at us
again from between the two scarlet geraniums, and a tendril of ivy had
been gently curled about his neck to hide the cruel wound.
After such long, lovely mornings as this, there is a late luncheon
under the shadow of a rock with Salemina and Francesca, an idle chat,
or the chapter of a book, and presently Lady Ardmore and her daughter
Elizabeth drive down to the sands. They are followed by Robin
Anstruther, Jamie, and Ralph on bicycles, and before long the stalwart
figure of Ronald Macdonald appears in the distance, just in time for a
cup of tea, which we brew in Lady Ardmore's bath-house on the beach.
XIX
"To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways."
_The Cotter's Saturday Night._
We have lived in Pettybaw a very short time, but I see that we have
already made an impression upon all grades of society. This was not
our intention. We gave Edinburgh as our last place of residence, with
the view of concealing our nationality, until such time as we should
choose to declare it; that is, when public excitement with regard to
our rental of the house in the loaning should have lapsed into a state
of indifference. And yet, modest, economical, and commonplace as has
been the administration of our affairs, our method of life has
evidently been thought unusual, and our conduct not precisely the
conduct of other summer visitors. Even our daily purchases, in manner,
in number, and in character, seem to be looked upon as eccentric, for
whenever we leave a shop, the relatives of the greengrocer, flesher,
draper, whoever it may be, bound downstairs, surround him in an eager
circle, and inquire the latest news.
In an unwise moment we begged the draper's wife to honor us with a
visit and explain the obliquities of the kitchen range and the
tortuosities of the sink-spout to Miss Grieve. While our landlady was
on the premises, I took occasion to invite her up to my own room, with
a view of seeing whether my mattress of pebbles and iron-filings could
be supplemented by another of shavings or straw, or some material less
provocative of bodily injuries. She was most sympathetic, persuasive,
logical, and after the manner of her kind proved to me conclusively
that the trouble lay with the too-saft occupant of the bed, not with
the bed itself, and gave me statistics with regard to the latter which
established its reputation and at the same moment destroyed my own.
She looked in at the various doors casually as she passed up and down
the stairs,--all save that of the dining-room, which Francesca had
prudently locked to conceal the fact that we had covered the family
portraits,--and I noticed at the time that her face wore an expression
of mingled grief and astonishment. It seemed to us afterward that
there was a good deal more passing up and down the loaning than when
we first arrived. At dusk especially, small processions of children
and young people walked by our cottage and gave shy glances at the
windows.
Finding Miss Grieve in an unusually amiable mood, I inquired the
probable cause of this phenomenon. She would not go so far as to give
any judicial opinion, but offered a few conjectures.
It might be the tirling-pin; it might be the white satin ribbons on
the curtains; it might be the guitars and banjos; it might be the
bicycle crate; it might be the profusion of plants; it might be the
continual feasting and revelry; it might be the blazing fires in a
Pettybaw summer. She thought a much more likely reason, however, was
because it had become known in the village that we had moved every
stick of furniture in the house out of its accustomed place and taken
the dressing-tables away from the windows,--"thae windys," she called
them.
I discussed this matter fully with Mr. Anstruther later on. He laughed
heartily, but confessed, with an amused relish of his national
conservatism, that to his mind there certainly was something radical,
advanced, and courageous in taking a dressing-table away from its
place, back to the window, and putting it anywhere else in a room. He
would be frank, he said, and acknowledge that it suggested an
undisciplined and lawless habit of thought, a disregard for authority,
a lack of reverence for tradition, and a riotous and unbridled
imagination.
This view of the matter gave us exquisite enjoyment. "But why?" I
asked laughingly. "The dressing-table is not a sacred object, even to
a woman. Why treat it with such veneration? Where there is but one
good light, and that immediately in front of the window, there is
every excuse for the British custom, but when the light is well
diffused, why not place the table wherever it looks well?"
"Ah, but it doesn't look well anywhere but back to the window," said
Mr. Anstruther artlessly. "It belongs there, you see; it has probably
been there since the time of Malcolm Canmore, unless Margaret was too
pious to look in a mirror. With your national love of change, you
cannot conceive how soothing it is to know that whenever you enter
your gate and glance upward, you will always see the curtains parted,
and between them, like an idol in a shrine, the ugly wooden back of a
little oval or oblong looking-glass. It gives one a sense of
permanence in a world where all is fleeting."
The public interest in our doings seems to be entirely of a friendly
nature, and if our neighbors find a hundredth part of the charm and
novelty in us that we find in them, they are fortunate indeed, and we
cheerfully sacrifice our privacy on the altar of the public good.
A village in Scotland is the only place I can fancy where housekeeping
becomes an enthralling occupation. All drudgery disappears in a rosy
glow of unexpected, unique, and stimulating conditions. I would rather
superintend Miss Grieve and cause the light of amazement to gleam ten
times daily in her humid eye, than lead a cotillion with Willie
Beresford. I would rather do the marketing for our humble breakfasts
and teas, or talk over the day's luncheons and dinners with Mistress
Brodie of the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, than go to the
opera.
Salemina and Francesca do not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so
they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an
exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me
irresponsible and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on
my galoshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little
streets and lanes on real, and if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke
of Wellington said, "When fair in Scotland, always carry an umbrella;
when it rains, please yourself," and I sometimes agree with
Stevenson's shivering statement, "Life does not seem to me to be an
amusement adapted to this climate." I quoted this to the doctor
yesterday, but he remarked with some surprise that he had not missed a
day's golfing for weeks. The chemist observed as he handed me a cake
of soap, "Won'erful blest in weather, we are, mam," simply because,
the rain being unaccompanied with high wind, one was enabled to hold
up an umbrella without having it turned inside out. When it ceased
dripping for an hour at noon, the greengrocer said cheerily, "Another
grand day, mam!" I assented, though I could not for the life of me
remember when the last one occurred. However, dreary as the weather
may be, one cannot be dull when doing one's morning round of shopping
in Pettybaw or Strathdee. I have only to give you thumb-nail sketches
of our favorite tradespeople to convince you of that fact.
* * * * *
We bought our first groceries of Mrs. Robert Phin, of Strathdee,
simply because she is an inimitable conversationalist. She is
expansive, too, about family matters, and tells us certain of her
"mon's" faults which it would be more seemly to keep in the safe
shelter of her own bosom.
Rab takes a wee drappie too much, it appears, and takes it so often
that he has little time to earn an honest penny for his family. This
is bad enough; but the fact that Mrs. Phin has been twice wed before,
and that in each case she innocently chose a ne'er-do-weel for a mate,
makes her a trifle cynical. She told me that she had laid twa husbands
in the kirkyard near which her little shop stands, and added
cheerfully, as I made some sympathetic response, "An' I hope it'll no
be lang afore I box Rab!"