Chapter 8

but it proved too difficult. Miss Hamilton's general idea was that we should write some verses in good plain English. Then we were to take out all the final g's, and indeed the final letters from all the words wherever it was possible, so that _full_, _awful_, _call_, _ball_, _hall_, _and away_ should be _fu'_, _awfu'_, _ca'_, _ba'_, _ha'_, _an' awa'_. This alone gives great charm and character to a poem; but we were also to change all words ending in _ow_ into _aw_. This doesn't injure the verse, you see, as _blaw_ and _snaw_ rhyme just as well as _blow_ and _snow_, beside bringing tears to the common eye with their poetic associations. Similarly, if we had _daughter_ and _slaughter_, we were to write them _dochter_ and _slauchter_, substituting in all cases _doon_, _froon_, _goon_, and _toon_, for _down_, _frown_, _gown_, and _town_. Then we made a list of Scottish idols,--pet words, national institutions, stock phrases, beloved objects,--convinced if we could weave them in we should attain 'atmosphere.' Here is the first list; it lengthened speedily: thistle, tartan, haar, haggis, kirk, claymore, parritch, broom, whin, sporran, whaup, plaid, scone, collops, whiskey, mutch, cairngorm, oatmeal, brae, kilt, brose, heather. Salemina and I were too devoted to common sense to succeed in this weaving process, so Penelope triumphed and won the first prize, both for that and also because she brought in a saying given us by Miss Dalziel, about the social classification of all Scotland into 'the gentlemen of the North, men of the South, people of the West, fowk o' Fife, and the Paisley bodies.' We think that her success came chiefly from her writing the verses with a Scotch plaid lead-pencil. What effect the absorption of so much red, blue, and green paint will have I cannot fancy, but she ate off--and up--all the tartan glaze before finishing the poem; it had a wonderfully stimulating effect, but the end is not yet!"

Of course there was a chorus of laughter when the young wretch exhibited my battered pencil, bought in Princes Street yesterday, its gay Gordon tints sadly disfigured by the destroying tooth, not of Time, but of a bard in the throes of composition.

"We bestowed a consolation prize on Salemina," continued Francesca, "because she succeeded in getting _hoots_, _losh_, _havers_, and _blathers_ into one line, but naturally she could not maintain such an ideal standard. Read your verses, Pen, though there is little hope that our friends will enjoy them as much as you do. Whenever Miss Hamilton writes anything of this kind, she emulates her distinguished ancestor Sir William Hamilton, who always fell off his own chair in fits of laughter when he was composing verses."

With this inspiring introduction I read my lines as follows:--

AN AMERICAN LADY'S FAREWELL TO EDINBURGH

THE MUSE BEING SOMEWHAT UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE SCOTTISH BALLAD

I canna thole my ain toun, Sin' I hae dwelt i' this; To hide in Edinboro' reek, Wad be the tap o' bliss. Yon bonnie plaid aboot me hap, The skirlin' pipes gae bring, With thistles fair tie up my hair, While I of Scotia sing.

The collops an' the cairngorms, The haggis an' the whin, The 'Stablished, Free, an' U. P. kirks, The hairt convinced o' sin,-- The parritch an' the heather-bell, The snawdrap on the shaw, The bit lam's bleatin' on the braes,-- How can I leave them a'!

How can I leave the marmalade An' bonnets o' Dundee? The haar, the haddies, an' the brose, The East win' blawin' free! How can I lay my sporran by, An' sit me doun at hame, Wi'oot a Hieland philabeg Or hyphenated name?

I lo'e the gentry o' the North, The Southern men I lo'e, The canty people o' the West, The Paisley bodies too. The pawky fowk o' Fife are dear,-- Sae dear are ane an' a', That e'en to think that we maun pairt Maist braks my hairt in twa.

So fetch me tartans, heather, scones, An' dye my tresses red; I'd deck me like th' unconquer'd Scots Wha hae wi' Wallace bled. Then bind my claymore to my side, My kilt an' mutch gae bring; While Scottish lays soun' i' my lugs McKinley's no my king,--

For Charlie, bonnie Stuart Prince, Has turned me Jacobite; I'd wear displayed the white cockade, An' (whiles) for him I'd fight! An' (whiles) I'd fight for a' that's Scotch, Save whuskey an' oatmeal, For wi' their ballads i' my bluid, Nae Scot could be mair leal!

I fancied that I had pitched my verses in so high a key that no one could mistake their burlesque intention. What was my confusion, however, to have one of the company remark when I finished, "Extremely pretty; but a mutch, you know, is an article of _woman's_ apparel."

Mr. Macdonald flung himself gallantly into the breach. He is such a dear fellow! So quick, so discriminating, so warm-hearted!

"Don't pick flaws in Miss Hamilton's finest line! That picture of a 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"--