Chapter 10

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 laughéd 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."

I did a bit of sobbing here that would have been a credit to Sarah 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 rôle.

"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