aversion was a cover, clapped on to keep my self-respect warm. I
abused him a good deal, it is true, because it was so delightful to
hear you and Salemina take his part. Sometimes I trembled for fear you
would agree with me, but you never did. The more I criticised him, the
louder you sang his praises,--it was lovely! The fact is,--we might as
well throw light upon the whole matter, and then never allude to it
again; and if you do tell Willie Beresford, you shall never visit my
manse, nor see me preside at my mothers' meetings, nor hear me address
the infant class in the Sunday-school,--the fact is I liked him from
the beginning at Lady Baird's dinner. I liked the bow he made when he
offered me his arm (I wish it had been his hand); I liked the top of
his head when it was bowed; I liked his arm when I took it; I liked
the height of his shoulder when I stood beside it; I liked the way he
put me in my chair (that showed chivalry), and unfolded his napkin
(that was neat and businesslike), and pushed aside all his wineglasses
but one (that was temperate); I liked the side view of his nose, the
shape of his collar, the cleanness of his shave, the manliness of his
tone,--oh, I liked him altogether, you must know how it is,
Penelope,--the goodness and strength and simplicity that radiated from
him. And when he said, within the first half-hour, that international
alliances presented even more difficulties to the imagination than
others, I felt, to my confusion, a distinct sense of disappointment.
Even while I was quarreling with him, I said to myself, 'You poor
darling, you cannot have him even if you should want him, so don't
look at him much!'--But I did look at him; and what is worse, he
looked at me; and what is worse yet, he curled himself so tightly
round my heart that if he takes himself away, I shall be cold the rest
of my life!"
"Then you are really sure of your love this time, and you have never
advised him to wed somebody more worthy than yourself?" I asked.
"Not I!" she replied. "I wouldn't put such an idea into his head for
worlds! He might adopt it!"
XXV
"Pale and wan was she when Glenlogie gaed ben,
But red rosy grew she whene'er he sat doun."
_Glenlogie_.
Just here the front door banged, and a manly step sounded on the
stair. Francesca sat up straight in a big chair, and dried her eyes
hastily with her poor little wet ball of a handkerchief; for she knows
that Willie is a privileged visitor in my studio. The door opened (it
was ajar), and Ronald Macdonald strode into the room. I hope I may
never have the same sense of nothingness again! To be young, pleasing,
gifted, and to be regarded no more than a fly upon the wall, is death
to one's self-respect.
He dropped on one knee beside Francesca and took her two hands in his
without removing his gaze from her speaking face. She burned, but did
not flinch under the ordeal. The color leaped into her cheeks. Love
swam in her tears, but was not drowned there; it was too strong.
"Did you mean it?" he asked.
She looked at him, trembling, as she said, "I meant every word, and
far, far more. I meant all that a girl can say to a man when she loves
him, and wants to be everything she is capable of being to him, to his
work, to his people, and to his--country."
Even this brief colloquy had been embarrassing, but I knew that worse
was still to come and could not be delayed much longer, so I left the
room hastily and with no attempt at apology; not that they minded my
presence in the least, or observed my exit, though I was obliged to
leap over Mr. Macdonald's feet in passing.
I found Mr. Beresford sitting on the stairs, in the lower hall.
"Willie, you angel, you idol, where did you find him?" I exclaimed.
"When I went into the post-office, an hour ago," he replied, "I met
Francesca. She asked me for Macdonald's Edinburgh address, saying she
had something that belonged to him and wished to send it after him. I
offered to address the package and see that it reached him as
expeditiously as possible. 'That is what I wish,' she said, with
elaborate formality. 'This is something I have just discovered,
something he needs very much, something he does not know he has left
behind.' I did not think it best to tell her at the moment that
Macdonald had not yet deserted Inchcaldy."
"Willie, you have the quickest intelligence and the most exquisite
insight of any man I ever met!"
"But the fact was that I had been to see him off, and found him
detained by the sudden illness of one of his elders. I rode over again
to take him the little parcel. Of course I don't know what it
contained; by its size and shape I should judge it might be a thimble,
or a collar-button, or a sixpence; but, at all events, he must have
needed the thing, for he certainly did not let the grass grow under
his feet after he received it! Let us go into the sitting-room until
they come down,--as they will have to, poor wretches, sooner or later;
I know that I am always being brought down against my will. Salemina
wants your advice about the number of her Majesty's portraits to be
hung on the front of the cottage, and the number of candles to be
placed in each window."
It was a half-hour later when Mr. Macdonald came into the room, and
walking directly up to Salemina kissed her hand respectfully.
"Miss Salemina," he said, with evident emotion, "I want to borrow one
of your national jewels for my Queen's crown."
"And what will our President say to lose a jewel from his crown?"
"Good republican rulers do not wear coronets, as a matter of
principle," he argued; "but in truth I fear I am not thinking of her
Majesty--God bless her! This gem is not entirely for state occasions.
'I would wear it in my bosom,
Lest my jewel I should tine.'
It is the crowning of my own life rather than that of the British
Empire that engages my present thought. Will you intercede for me with
Francesca's father?"
"And this is the end of all your international bickering?" Salemina
asked teasingly.
"Yes," he answered; "we have buried the hatchet, signed articles of
agreement, made treaties of international comity. Francesca stays over
here as a kind of missionary to Scotland, so she says, or as a
feminine diplomat; she wishes to be on hand to enforce the Monroe
Doctrine properly, in case her government's accredited ambassadors
relax in the performance of their duty."
"Salemina!" called a laughing voice outside the door. "I am won'erful
lifted up. You will be a prood woman the day, for I am now
Estaiblished!" and Francesca, clad in Miss Grieve's Sunday bonnet,
shawl, and black cotton gloves, entered and curtsied demurely to the
floor. She held, as corroborative detail, a life of John Knox in her
hand, and anything more incongruous than her sparkling eyes and
mutinous mouth under the melancholy head-gear can hardly be imagined.
"I am now Estaiblished," she repeated. "Div ye ken the new asseestant
frae Inchcawdy pairish? I'm the mon" (a second deep curtsy here). "I
trust, leddies, that ye'll mak' the maist o' your releegious
preevileges, an' that ye'll be constant at the kurruk.--Have you given
papa's consent, Salemina? And isn't it dreadful that he is Scotch?"
"Isn't it dreadful that she is not?" asked Mr. Macdonald. "Yet to my
mind no woman in Scotland is half as lovable as she!"
"And no man in America begins to compare with him," Francesca
confessed sadly. "Isn't it pitiful that out of the millions of our own
countrypeople we couldn't have found somebody that would do? What do
you think now, Lord Ronald Macdonald, of those dangerous international
alliances?"
"You never understood that speech of mine," he replied, with prompt
mendacity. "When I said that international marriages presented more
difficulties to the imagination than others, I was thinking of your
marriage and mine, and that, I knew from the first moment I saw you,
would be extremely difficult to arrange!"
XXVI
"And soon a score of fires, I ween,
From height, and hill, and cliff, were seen;
Each after each they glanced to sight,
As stars arise upon the night.
They gleamed on many a dusky tarn,
Haunted by the lonely earn;
On many a cairn's grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid."
_The Lay of the Last Minstrel_.
The rain continued at intervals throughout the day, but as the
afternoon wore on the skies looked a trifle more hopeful. It would be
"saft," no doubt, climbing the Law, but the bonfire must be lighted.
Would Pettybaw be behind London? Would Pettybaw desert the Queen in
her hour of need? Not though the rain were bursting the well-heads on
Cawda; not though the swollen mountain burns drowned us to the knee!
So off we started as the short midsummer night descended.
We were to climb the Law, wait for the signal from Cawda's lonely
height, and then fire Pettybaw's torch of loyalty to the little lady
in black; not a blaze flaming out war and rumors of war, as was the
beacon-fire on the old gray battlements of Edinburgh Castle in the
days of yore, but a message of peace and good will. Pausing at a hut
on the side of the great green mountain, we looked north toward Helva,
white-crested with a wreath of vapor. (You need not look on your map
of Scotland for Cawda and Helva, for you will not find them any more
than you will find Pettybaw and Inchcaldy.) One by one the tops of the
distant hills began to clear, and with the glass we could discern the
bonfire cairns upbuilt here and there for Scotland's evening sacrifice
of love and fealty. Cawda was still veiled, and Cawda was to give the
signal for all the smaller fires. Pettybaw's, I suppose, was counted
as a flash in the pan, but not one of the hundred patriots climbing
the mountain side would have acknowledged it; to us the good name of
the kingdom of Fife and the glory of the British Empire depended on
Pettybaw fire. Some of us had misgivings, too,--misgivings founded
upon Miss Grieve's dismal prophecies. She had agreed to put nine
lighted candles in each of our cottage windows at ten o'clock, but had
declined to go out of her kitchen to see a procession, hear a band, or
look at a bonfire. She had had a sair sickenin' day, an amount of work
too wearifu' for one person by her lane. She hoped that the bonfire
wasna built o' Mrs. Sinkler's coals nor Mr. Macbrose's kindlings, nor
soaked with Mr. Cameron's paraffine; and she finished with the
customary but irrelative and exasperating allusion to the exceedingly
nice family with whom she had lived in Glasgy.
And still we toiled upward, keeping our doubts to ourselves. Jean was
limping bravely, supported by Robin Anstruther's arm. Mr. Macdonald
was ardently helping Francesca, who can climb like a chamois, but
would doubtless rather be assisted. Her gypsy face shone radiant out
of her black cloth hood, and Ronald's was no less luminous. I have
never seen two beings more love-daft. They comport themselves as if
they had read the manuscript of the tender passion, and were moving in
exalted superiority through a less favored world,--a world waiting
impatiently for the first number of the story to come out.
Still we climbed, and as we approached the Grey Lady (a curious rock
very near the summit) somebody proposed three cheers for the Queen.
How the children hurrahed,--for the infant heart is easily
inflamed,--and how their shrill Jubilee slogan pierced the mystery of
the night, and went rolling on from glen to glen to the Firth of Forth
itself! Then there was a shout from the rocketmen far out on the open
moor,--"Cawda's clear! Cawda's clear!" Back against a silver sky stood
the signal pile, and signal rockets flashed upward, to be answered
from all the surrounding hills.
Now to light our own fire. One of the village committee solemnly took
off his hat and poured on oil. The great moment had come. Brenda
Macrae approached the sacred pile, and, tremulous from the effect of
much contradictory advice, applied the torch. Silence, thou Grieve and
others, false prophets of disaster! Who now could say that Pettybaw
bonfire had been badly built, or that its fifteen tons of coal and
twenty cords of wood had been unphilosophically heaped together!
The flames rushed toward the sky with ruddy blaze, shining with weird
effect against the black fir-trees and the blacker night. Three cheers
more! God save the Queen! May she reign over us, happy and glorious!
And we cheered lustily, too, you may be sure! It was more for the
woman than the monarch; it was for the blameless life, not for the
splendid monarchy; but there was everything hearty, and nothing alien
in our tone, when we sang "God Save the Queen" with the rest of the
Pettybaw villagers.
The land darkened; the wind blew chill. Willie, Mr. Macdonald, and Mr.
Anstruther brought rugs, and found a sheltered nook for us where we
might still watch the scene. There we sat, looking at the plains
below, with all the village streets sparkling with light, with rockets
shooting into the air and falling to earth in golden rain, with red
lights flickering on the gray lakes, and with one beacon-fire after
another gleaming from the hilltops, till we could count more than
fifty answering one another from the wooded crests along the shore,
some of them piercing the rifts of low-lying clouds till they seemed
to be burning in mid-heaven.
Then, one by one, the distant fires faded, and as some of us still sat
there silently, far, far away in the gray east there was a faint flush
of carmine where the new dawn was kindling in secret. Underneath that
violet bank of cloud the sun was forging his beams of light. The
pole-star paled. The breath of the new morrow stole up out of the rosy
gray. The wings of the morning stirred and trembled; and in the
darkness and chill and mysterious awakening, eyes looked into other
eyes, hand sought hand, and cheeks touched each other in mute caress.
XXVII
"Sun, gallop down the westlin skies,
Gang soon to bed, an' quickly rise;
O lash your steeds, post time away,
And haste about our bridal day!"
_The Gentle Shepherd_.
Every noon, during this last week, as we have wended our way up the
loaning to the Pettybaw inn for our luncheon, we have passed three
magpies sitting together on the topmost rail of the fence. I am not
prepared to state that they were always the same magpies; I only know
there were always three of them. We have just discovered what they
were about, and great is the excitement in our little circle. I am to
be married to-morrow, and married in Pettybaw, and Miss Grieve says
that in Scotland the number of magpies one sees is of infinite
significance: that one means sorrow; two, mirth; three, a marriage;
four, a birth, and we now recall as corroborative detail that we saw
one magpie, our first, on the afternoon of her arrival.
Mr. Beresford has been cabled for, and must return to America at once
on important business. He persuaded me that the Atlantic is an ower
large body of water to roll between two lovers, and I agreed with all
my heart.
A wedding was arranged, mostly by telegraph, in six hours. The
Reverend Ronald and the Friar are to perform the ceremony; a dear old
painter friend of mine, a London R. A., will come to give me away;
Francesca will be my maid of honor; Elizabeth Ardmore and Jean
Dalziel, my bridemaidens; Robin Anstruther, the best man; while Jamie
and Ralph will be kilted pages-in-waiting, and Lady Ardmore will give
the breakfast at the castle.
Never was there such generosity, such hospitality, such wealth of
friendship! True, I have no wedding finery; but as I am perforce a
Scottish bride, I can be married in the white gown with the silver
thistles in which I went to Holyrood.
Mr. Anstruther took a night train to and from London, to choose the
bouquets and bridal souvenirs. Lady Baird has sent the veil, and a
wonderful diamond thistle to pin it on,--a jewel fit for a princess!
With the dear Dominie's note promising to be an usher came an antique
silver casket filled with white heather. And as for the bride-cake, it
is one of Salemina's gifts, chosen as much in a spirit of fun as
affection. It is surely appropriate for this American wedding
transplanted to Scottish soil, and what should it be but a model, in
fairy icing, of Sir Walter's beautiful monument in Princes Street! Of
course Francesca is full of nonsensical quips about it, and says that
the Edinburgh jail would have been just as fine architecturally (it
is, in truth, a building beautiful enough to tempt an aesthete to
crime), and a much more fitting symbol for a wedding-cake,--unless,
indeed, she adds, Salemina intends her gift to be a monument to my
folly.
Pettybaw kirk is trimmed with yellow broom from these dear Scottish
banks and braes; and waving their green fans and plumes up and down
the aisle where I shall walk a bride, are tall ferns and bracken from
Crummylowe Glen, where we played ballads.
As I look back upon it, the life here has been all a ballad from first
to last. Like the elfin Tam Lin,
"The queen o' fairies she caught me
In this green hill to dwell,"
and these hasty nuptials are a fittingly romantic ending to the
summer's poetry. I am in a mood, were it necessary, to be "ta'en by
the milk-white hand," lifted to a pillion on a coal-black charger, and
spirited "o'er the border an' awa'" by my dear Jock o' Hazledean.
Unhappily, all is quite regular and aboveboard; no "lord of Langley
dale" contests the prize with the bridegroom, but the marriage is at
least unique and unconventional; no one can rob me of that sweet
consolation.
So "gallop down the westlin skies," dear Sun, but, prythee, gallop
back to-morrow! "Gang soon to bed," an you will, but rise again
betimes! Give me Queen's weather, dear Sun, and shine a benison upon
my wedding morn!
[_Exit Penelope into the ballad-land of maiden dreams._]
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