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Penelope's Progress

by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin · English · Gutenberg #28877 · 357,366 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Penelope's Progress

Author: Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin


        
Release date: May 19, 2009 [eBook #28877]

Language: English

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PENELOPE'S PROGRESS

by

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

                  *       *       *       *       *


BY MRS. WIGGIN.

THE BIRDS' CHRISTMAS CAROL. Illustrated. Square 12mo, 50 cents.

THE STORY OF PATSY. Illustrated. Square 12mo, 60 cents.

A SUMMER IN A CAÑON. A California Story. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25.

TIMOTHY'S QUEST. A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, who cares to read
it. 16mo, $1.00.

THE SAME. Holiday Edition. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, $1.50.

A CATHEDRAL COURTSHIP, AND PENELOPE'S ENGLISH EXPERIENCES.
Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

PENELOPE'S PROGRESS. In unique Scottish binding. 16mo, $1.25.

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

THE SAME. In Riverside School Library. 60 cents, net.

THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER. 16mo, $1.00.

MARM LISA, 16mo, $1.00.

NINE LOVE SONGS, AND A CAROL. Music by Mrs. WIGGIN. Words by
Herrick, Sill, and others. Square 8vo $1.25.


BY MRS. WIGGIN AND MISS SMITH.

THE STORY HOUR. A Book for the Home and Kindergarten. By Mrs.
Wiggin and Nora A. Smith. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. By Mrs. Wiggin and Nora A. Smith. A Book of
Nursery Logic. 16mo, $1.00.

THE REPUBLIC OF CHILDHOOD. By Mrs. Wiggin and Nora A. Smith.
In three volumes, each, 16mo, $1.00.

    I. FROEBEL'S GIFTS.
   II. FROEBEL'S OCCUPATIONS.
  III. KINDERGARTEN PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,

Boston and New York.


                  *       *       *       *       *


PENELOPE'S PROGRESS

Being Such Extracts from
the Commonplace Book
of Penelope Hamilton
As Relate to Her
Experiences in
Scotland

by

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN







Boston and New York
The Riverside Press

Boston And New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1899

Copyright, 1897 and 1898, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Copyright, 1898, by Kate Douglas Riggs
All Rights Reserved

Thirtieth Thousand




TO

G. C. R.




CONTENTS

  PART FIRST. IN TOWN

                                                       PAGE

      I. A Triangular Alliance                            1

     II. "Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat"                  12

    III. A Vision in Princes Street                      18

     IV. Susanna Crum couldna say                        29

      V. We emulate the Jackdaw                          38

     VI. Edinburgh Society, Past and Present             48

    VII. Francesca meets th' Unconquer'd Scot            60

   VIII. "What made th' Assembly shine?"                 70

     IX. Omnia Presbyteria est Divisa in Partes Tres     82

      X. Mrs. M'collop as a Sermon-Taster                93

     XI. Holyrood awakens                               101

    XII. Farewell to Edinburgh                          117

   XIII. The Spell of Scotland                          124

  PART SECOND. IN THE COUNTRY

    XIV. The Wee Theekit Hoosie in the Loaning          137

     XV. Jane Grieve and her Grievances                 147

    XVI. The Path that led to Crummylowe                161

   XVII. Playing Sir Patrick Spens                      168

  XVIII. Paris comes to Pettybaw                        182

    XIX. Fowk o' Fife                                   190

     XX. A Fifeshire Tea-Party                          207

    XXI. International Bickering                        214

   XXII. Francesca entertains the Green-Eyed Monster    224

  XXIII. Ballad Revels at Rowardennan                   234

   XXIV. Old Songs and Modern Instances                 244

    XXV. A Treaty between Nations                       255

   XXVI. "Scotland's burning!  Look out!"               260

  XXVII. Three Magpies and a Marriage                   265




PENELOPE'S PROGRESS

PART FIRST. IN TOWN

I


    "Edina, Scotia's darling seat!
    All hail thy palaces and towers!"

                  Edinburgh, April, 189-.
                  22, Breadalbane Terrace.

We have traveled together before, Salemina, Francesca, and I, and we
know the very worst there is to know about one another. After this
point has been reached, it is as if a triangular marriage had taken
place, and, with the honeymoon comfortably over, we slip along in
thoroughly friendly fashion. I use no warmer word than "friendly"
because, in the first place, the highest tides of feeling do not visit
the coast of triangular alliances; and because, in the second place,
"friendly" is a word capable of putting to the blush many a more
passionate and endearing one.

Every one knows of our experiences in England, for we wrote volumes of
letters concerning them, the which were widely circulated among our
friends at the time and read aloud under the evening lamps in the
several cities of our residence.

Since then few striking changes have taken place in our history.

Salemina returned to Boston for the winter, to find, to her amazement,
that for forty odd years she had been rather overestimating it.

On arriving in New York, Francesca discovered that the young lawyer
whom for six months she had been advising to marry somebody "more
worthy than herself" was at last about to do it. This was somewhat in
the nature of a shock, for Francesca has been in the habit, ever since
she was seventeen, of giving her lovers similar advice, and up to this
time no one of them has ever taken it. She therefore has had the not
unnatural hope, I think, of organizing at one time or another all
these disappointed and faithful swains into a celibate brotherhood;
and perhaps of driving by the interesting monastery with her husband
and calling his attention modestly to the fact that these poor monks
were filling their barren lives with deeds of piety, trying to
remember their Creator with such assiduity that they might, in time,
forget Her.

Her chagrin was all the keener at losing this last aspirant to her
hand in that she had almost persuaded herself that she was as fond of
him as she was likely to be of anybody, and that, on the whole, she
had better marry him and save his life and reason.

Fortunately she had not communicated this gleam of hope by letter,
feeling, I suppose, that she would like to see for herself the light
of joy breaking over his pale cheek. The scene would have been rather
pretty and touching, but meantime the Worm had turned and dispatched a
letter to the Majestic at the quarantine station, telling her that he
had found a less reluctant bride in the person of her intimate friend
Miss Rosa Van Brunt; and so Francesca's dream of duty and sacrifice
was over.

Salemina says she was somewhat constrained for a week and a trifle
cynical for a fortnight, but that afterwards her spirits mounted on
ever ascending spirals to impossible heights, where they have since
remained. It appears from all this that although she was piqued at
being taken at her word, her heart was not in the least damaged. It
never was one of those fragile things which have to be wrapped in
cotton, and preserved from the slightest blow--Francesca's heart. It
is made of excellent stout, durable material, and I often tell her
with the care she takes of it, and the moderate strain to which it is
subjected, it ought to be as good as new a hundred years hence.

As for me, the scene of my own love story is laid in America and
England, and has naught to do with Edinburgh. It is far from finished;
indeed, I hope it will be the longest serial on record, one of those
charming tales that grow in interest as chapter after chapter unfolds,
until at the end we feel as if we could never part with the delightful
people.

I should be, at this very moment, Mrs. William Beresford, a highly
respectable young matron who painted rather good pictures in her
spinster days, when she was Penelope Hamilton of the great American
working-class, Unlimited; but first Mrs. Beresford's dangerous
illness, and then her death, have kept my dear boy a willing prisoner
in Cannes, his heart sadly torn betwixt his love and duty to his
mother and his desire to be with me. The separation is virtually over
now, and we two, alas, have ne'er a mother or a father between us, so
we shall not wait many months before beginning to comfort each other
in good earnest.

Meantime Salemina and Francesca have persuaded me to join their
forces, and Mr. Beresford will follow us to Scotland in a few short
weeks, when we shall have established ourselves in the country.

We are overjoyed at being together again, we three women folk. As I
said before, we know the worst of one another, and the future has no
terrors. We have learned, for example, that:--

Francesca does not like an early morning start. Salemina refuses to
arrive late anywhere. Penelope prefers to stay behind and follow next
day.

Francesca scorns to travel third class. So does Salemina, but she will
if urged.

Penelope hates a four-wheeler. Salemina is nervous in a hansom.
Francesca prefers a Victoria.

Salemina likes a steady fire in the grate. Penelope opens a window and
fans herself.

Salemina inclines to instructive and profitable expeditions. Francesca
loves processions and sightseeing. Penelope abhors all of these
equally.

Salemina likes history. Francesca loves fiction. Penelope adores
poetry and detests facts.

Penelope likes substantial breakfasts. Francesca dislikes the sight of
food in the morning.

In the matter of breakfasts, when we have leisure to assert our
individual tastes, Salemina prefers tea, Francesca cocoa, and I,
coffee. We can never, therefore, be served with a large comfortable
pot of anything, but are confronted instead with a caravan of silver
jugs, china jugs, bowls of hard and soft sugar, hot milk, cold milk,
hot water, and cream, while each in her secret heart wishes that the
other two were less _exigeante_ in the matter of diet.

This does not sound promising, but it works perfectly well in practice
by the exercise of a little flexibility.

As we left dear old Dovermarle Street and Smith's Private Hotel
behind, and drove to the station to take the Flying Scotsman, we
indulged in floods of reminiscence over the joys of travel we had
tasted together in the past, and talked with lively anticipation of
the new experiences awaiting us in the land of heather.

While Salemina went to purchase the three first-class tickets, I
superintended the porters as they disposed our luggage in the van, and
in so doing my eye lighted upon a third-class carriage which was, for
a wonder, clean, comfortable, and vacant. Comparing it hastily with
the first-class compartment being held by Francesca, I found that it
differed only in having no carpet on the floor, and a smaller number
of buttons in the upholstering. This was really heart-rending when the
difference in fare for three persons would be at least twenty dollars.
What a delightful sum to put aside for a rainy day; that is, you
understand, what a delightful sum to put aside and spend on the first
rainy day; for that is the way we always interpret the expression.

When Salemina returned with the tickets, she found me, as usual,
bewailing our extravagance.

Francesca descended suddenly from her post, and, snatching the tickets
from her duenna, exclaimed, "'I know that I can save the country, and
I know no other man can!' as William Pitt said to the Duke of
Devonshire. I have had enough of this argument. For six months of last
year we discussed traveling third class and continued to travel first.
Get into that clean, hard-seated, ill-upholstered third-class carriage
immediately, both of you; save room enough for a mother with two
babies, a man carrying a basket of fish, and an old woman with five
pieces of hand-luggage and a dog; meanwhile I will exchange the
tickets."

So saying, she disappeared rapidly among the throng of passengers,
guards, porters, newspaper boys, golfers with bags of clubs, young
ladies with bicycles, and old ladies with tin hat-boxes.

"What decision, what swiftness of judgment, what courage and energy!"
murmured Salemina. "Isn't she wonderfully improved since that
unexpected turning of the Worm?"

Francesca rejoined us just as the guard was about to lock us in, and
flung herself down, quite breathless from her unusual exertion.

"Well, we are traveling third for once, and the money is saved, or at
least it is ready to spend again at the first opportunity. The man
didn't wish to exchange the tickets at all. He says it is never done.
I told him they were bought by a very inexperienced American lady
(that is you, Salemina) who knew almost nothing of the distinctions
between first and third class, and naturally took the best, believing
it to be none too good for a citizen of the greatest republic on the
face of the earth. He said the tickets had been stamped on. I said so
should I be if I returned without exchanging them. He was a very dense
person, and didn't see my joke at all, but then, it is true, there
were thirteen men in line behind me, with the train starting in three
minutes, and there is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak
sense of humor as selling tickets behind a grating, so I am not really
vexed with him. There! we are quite comfortable, pending the arrival
of the babies, the dog, and the fish, and certainly no vender of
periodic literature will dare approach us while we keep these books in
evidence."

She had Laurence Hutton's "Literary Landmarks" and "Royal Edinburgh,"
by Mrs. Oliphant; I had Lord Cockburn's Memorials of his Time; and
somebody had given Salemina, at the moment of leaving London, a work
on "Scotia's darling seat," in three huge volumes. When all this
printed matter was heaped on the top of Salemina's hold-all on the
platform, the guard had asked, "Do you belong to these books, mam?"

"We may consider ourselves injured in going from London to Edinburgh
in a third-class carriage in eight or ten hours, but listen to this,"
said Salemina, who had opened one of her large volumes at random when
the train started.

"'The Edinburgh and London Stage-Coach begins on Monday, 13th October,
1712. All that desire ... let them repair to the _Coach and Horses_ at
the head of the Canongate every Saturday, or the _Black Swan_ in
Holborn every other Monday, at both of which places they may be
received in a coach which performs the whole journey in thirteen days
without any stoppage (if God permits) having eighty able horses. Each
passenger paying £4 10s. for the whole journey, alowing each 20 lbs.
weight and all above to pay 6d. per lb. The coach sets off at six in
the morning' (you could never have caught it, Francesca!), 'and is
performed by Henry Harrison.' And here is a 'modern improvement,'
forty-two years later. In July, 1754, the 'Edinburgh Courant'
advertises the stage-coach drawn by six horses, with a postilion on
one of the leaders, as a 'new, genteel, two-end glass machine, hung on
steel springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer
and twelve in winter. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed (if God
permits) by your dutiful servant, Hosea Eastgate. _Care is taken of
small parcels according to their value._'"

"It would have been a long, wearisome journey," said I, contemplatively;
"but, nevertheless, I wish we were making it in 1712 instead of a
century and three quarters later."

"What would have been happening, Salemina?" asked Francesca politely,
but with no real desire to know.

"The Union had been already established five years," began Salemina
intelligently.

"Which Union?"

"Whose Union?"

Salemina is used to these interruptions and eruptions of illiteracy on
our part. I think she rather enjoys them, as in the presence of such
complete ignorance as ours her lamp of knowledge burns all the
brighter.

"Anne was on the throne," she went on, with serene dignity.

"What Anne?"

"I know the Anne!" exclaimed Francesca excitedly. "She came from the
Midnight Sun country, or up that way. She was very extravagant, and
had something to do with Jingling Geordie in 'The Fortunes of Nigel.'
It is marvelous how one's history comes back to one!"

"Quite marvelous," said Salemina dryly; "or at least the state in
which it comes back is marvelous. I am not a stickler for dates, as
you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your
minds, girls, just in a general way, you would not be so shamefully
befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife of James VI.
of Scotland, who was James I. of England, and she died a hundred years
before the Anne I mean,--the last of the Stuarts, you know. My Anne
came after William and Mary, and before the Georges."

"Which William and Mary?"

"What Georges?"

But this was too much even for Salemina's equanimity, and she retired
behind her book in dignified displeasure, while Francesca and I meekly
looked up the Annes in a genealogical table, and tried to decide
whether "b. 1665" meant born or beheaded.




II


The weather that greeted us on our unheralded arrival in Scotland was
of the precise sort offered by Edinburgh to her unfortunate queen,
when,

    "After a youth by woes o'ercast,
    After a thousand sorrows past,
    The lovely Mary once again
    Set foot upon her native plain."

John Knox records of those memorable days: "The very face of heaven
did manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with
hir--to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety--for in the
memorie of man never was seen a more dolorous face of the heavens than
was at her arryvall ... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie
man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir
nor two days after."

We could not see Edina's famous palaces and towers because of the
_haar_, that damp, chilling, drizzling, dripping fog or mist which the
east wind summons from the sea; but we knew that they were there,
shrouded in the heart of that opaque mysterious grayness, and that
before many hours our eyes would feast upon their beauty.

Perhaps it was the weather, but I could think of nothing but poor
Queen Mary! She had drifted into my imagination with the _haar_, so
that I could fancy her homesick gaze across the water as she murmured,
"_Adieu, ma chère France! Je ne vous verray jamais plus!_"--could
fancy her saying as in Allan Cunningham's verse:--

    "The sun rises bright in France,
    And fair sets he;
    But he hath tint the blithe blink he had
    In my ain countree."

And then I recalled Mary's first good-night in Edinburgh: that
"serenade of 500 rascals with vile fiddles and rebecks;" that singing,
"in bad accord," of Protestant psalms by the wet crowd beneath the
palace windows, while the fires on Arthur's Seat shot flickering
gleams of welcome through the dreary fog. What a lullaby for poor
Mary, half Frenchwoman and all Papist!

It is but just to remember the "indefatigable and undissuadable" John
Knox's statement, "the melody lyked her weill and she willed the same
to be continewed some nightis after." For my part, however, I distrust
John Knox's musical feeling, and incline sympathetically to the Sieur
de Brantôme's account, with its "vile fiddles" and "discordant
psalms," although his judgment was doubtless a good deal depressed by
what he called the _si grand brouillard_ that so dampened the spirits
of Mary's French retinue.

Ah well, I was obliged to remember, in order to be reasonably happy
myself, that Mary had a gay heart, after all; that she was but
nineteen; that, though already a widow, she did not mourn her young
husband as one who could not be comforted; and that she must soon have
been furnished with merrier music than the psalms, for another of the
sour comments of the time is, "Our Queen weareth the dule [weeds], but
she can dance daily, dule and all!"

These were my thoughts as we drove through invisible streets in the
Edinburgh _haar_, turned into what proved next day to be a Crescent,
and drew up to an invisible house with a visible number 22 gleaming
over a door which gaslight transformed into a probability. We
alighted, and though we could scarcely see the driver's outstretched
hand, he was quite able to discern a half-crown, and demanded three
shillings.

The noise of our cab had brought Mrs. M'Collop to the door,--good (or
at least pretty good) Mrs. M'Collop, to whose apartments we had been
commended by English friends who had never occupied them.

Dreary as it was without, all was comfortable within doors, and a
cheery (one-and-sixpenny) fire crackled in the grate. Our private
drawing-room was charmingly furnished, and so large that,
notwithstanding the presence of a piano, two sofas, five small tables,
cabinets, desks, and chairs,--not forgetting a dainty five-o'clock tea
equipage,--we might have given a party in the remaining space.

"If this is a typical Scotch lodging I like it; and if it is Scotch
hospitality to lay the cloth and make the fire before it is asked for,
then I call it simply Arabian in character!" and Salemina drew off her
damp gloves, and extended her hands to the blaze.

"And isn't it delightful that the bill doesn't come in for a whole
week?" asked Francesca. "We have only our English experiences on which
to found our knowledge, and all is delicious mystery. The tea may be a
present from Mrs. M'Collop, and the sugar may not be an extra; the
fire may be included in the rent of the apartment, and the piano may
not be taken away to-morrow to enhance the attractions of the
dining-room floor." (It was Francesca, you remember, who had
"warstled" with the itemized accounts at Smith's Private Hotel in
London, and she who was always obliged to turn pounds, shillings, and
pence into dollars and cents before she could add or subtract.)

"Come and look at the flowers in my bedroom," I called, "four great
boxes full! Mr. Beresford must have ordered the carnations, because he
always does; but where did the roses come from, I wonder?"

I rang the bell, and a neat white-aproned maid appeared.

"Who brought these flowers, please?"

"I couldna say, mam."

"Thank you; will you be good enough to ask Mrs. M'Collop?"

In a moment she returned with the message, "There will be a letter in
the box, mam."

"It seems to me the letter should be in the box now, if it is ever to
be," I thought, and I presently drew this card from among the fragrant
buds:--

"Lady Baird sends these Scotch roses as a small return for the
pleasure she has received from Miss Hamilton's pictures. Lady Baird
will give herself the pleasure of calling to-morrow; meantime she
hopes that Miss Hamilton and her party will dine with her some evening
this week."

"How nice!" exclaimed Salemina.

"The celebrated Miss Hamilton's undistinguished party presents its
humble compliments to Lady Baird," chanted Francesca, "and having no
engagements whatever, and small hope of any, will dine with her on any
and every evening she may name. Miss Hamilton's party will wear its
best clothes, polish its mental jewels, and endeavor in every possible
way not to injure the gifted Miss Hamilton's reputation among the
Scottish nobility."

I wrote a hasty note of thanks to Lady Baird, and rang the bell.

"Can I send a message, please?" I asked the maid.

"I couldna say, mam."

"Will you be good enough to ask Mrs. M'Collop, please?"

Interval; then:--

"The Boots will tak' it at seeven o'clock, mam."

"Thank you; is Fotheringay Crescent near here?"

"I couldna say, mam."

"Thank you; what is your name, please?"

I waited in well-grounded anxiety, for I had no idea that she knew her
name, or that if she had ever heard it, she could say it; but, to my
surprise, she answered almost immediately, "Susanna Crum, mam!"

What a joy it is in a vexatious world, where things "gang aft agley,"
to find something absolutely right.

If I had devoted years to the subject, having the body of Susanna Crum
before my eyes every minute of the time for inspiration, Susanna Crum
is what I should have named that maid. Not a vowel could be added, not
a consonant omitted. I said so when first I saw her, and weeks of
intimate acquaintance only deepened my reverence for the parental
genius that had so described her to the world.




III


When we awoke next morning the sun had forgotten itself and was
shining in at Mrs. M'Collop's back windows.

We should have arisen at once to burn sacrifices and offer oblations,
but we had seen the sun frequently in America, and had no idea (poor
fools!) that it was anything to be grateful for, so we accepted it,
almost without comment, as one of the perennial providences of life.

When I speak of Edinburgh sunshine I do not mean, of course, any such
burning, whole-souled, ardent warmth of beam as one finds in countries
where they make a specialty of climate. It is, generally speaking, a
half-hearted, uncertain ray, as pale and as transitory as a martyr's
smile; but its faintest gleam, or its most puerile attempt to gleam,
is admired and recorded by its well-disciplined constituency. Not only
that, but at the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman
remarks smilingly, "I think now we shall be having settled weather!"
It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but quite groundless, and leads
one to believe in the story that when Father Noah refused to take
Sandy into the ark, he sat down philosophically outside, saying, with
a glance at the clouds, "Aweel! the day's jist aboot the ord'nar', an'
I wouldna won'er if we saw the sun afore nicht!"

But what loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and
where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to
the sombre beauty of that old gray town of the North? "Gray! why, it
is gray, or gray and gold, or gray and gold and blue, or gray and gold
and blue and green, or gray and gold and blue and green and purple,
according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take
it when it is most sombrely gray, where is another such gray city?"

So says one of her lovers, and so the great army of lovers would say,
had they the same gift of language; for

    "Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, ...
    Yea, an imperial city that might hold
    Five times a hundred noble towns in fee, ...
    Thus should her towers be raised; with vicinage
    Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets,
    As if to indicate, 'mid choicest seats
    Of Art, abiding Nature's majesty."

We ate a hasty breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out
for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps the most pleasurable
sensation in the world. Francesca was ready first, and, having
mentioned the fact several times ostentatiously, she went into the
drawing-room to wait and read "The Scotsman." When we went thither a
few minutes later we found that she had disappeared.

"She is below, of course," said Salemina. "She fancies that we shall
feel more ashamed at our tardiness if we find her sitting on the hall
bench in silent martyrdom."

There was no one in the hall, however, save Susanna, who inquired if
we would see the cook before going out.

"We have no time now, Susanna," I remarked. "We are anxious to have a
walk before the weather changes if possible, but we shall be out for
luncheon and in for dinner, and Mrs. M'Collop may give us anything she
pleases. Do you know where Miss Francesca is?"

"I couldna s--"

"Certainly, of course you couldn't; but I wonder if Mrs. M'Collop saw
her?"

Mrs. M'Collop appeared from the basement, and vouchsafed the
information that she had seen "the young leddy rinnin' after the
regiment."

"Running after the regiment!" repeated Salemina automatically. "What a
reversal of the laws of nature! Why, in Berlin, it was always the
regiment that used to run after her!"

We learned in what direction the soldiers had gone, and pursuing the
same path found the young lady on the corner of a street near by. She
was quite unabashed. "You don't know what you have missed!" she said
excitedly. "Let us get into this tram, and possibly we can head them
off somewhere. They may be going into battle, and if so my heart's
blood is at their service. It is one of those experiences that come
only once in a lifetime. There were pipes and there were kilts! (I
didn't suppose they ever really wore them outside of the theatre!)
When you have seen the kilts swinging, Salemina, you will never be the
same woman afterwards! You never expected to see the Olympian gods
walking, did you? Perhaps you thought they always sat on practicable
rocks and made stiff gestures from the elbow, as they do in the Wagner
operas? Well, these gods walked, if you can call the inspired gait a
walk! If there is a single spinster left in Scotland, it is because
none of these ever asked her to marry him. Ah, how grateful I ought to
be that I am free to say 'yes,' if a kilt ever asks me to be his! Poor
Penelope, yoked to your commonplace trousered Beresford! (I wish the
tram would go faster!) You must capture one of them, by fair means or
foul, Penelope, and Salemina and I will hold him down while you paint
him,--there they are, they are there somewhere, don't you hear them?"

There they were indeed, filing down the grassy slopes of the Gardens,
swinging across one of the stone bridges, and winding up the Castle
Hill to the Esplanade like a long, glittering snake; the streamers of
their Highland bonnets waving, their arms glistening in the sun, and
the bagpipes playing "The March of the Cameron Men." The pipers
themselves were mercifully hidden from us on that first occasion, and
it was well, for we could never have borne another feather's weight of
ecstasy.

It was in Princes Street that we had alighted,--named thus for the
prince who afterwards became George IV.--and I hope he was, and is,
properly grateful. It ought never to be called a street, this most
magnificent of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that
interdict of the Court of Sessions in 1774, which prevented the
Gradgrinds of the day from erecting buildings along its south side,--a
sordid scheme that would have been the very superfluity of
naughtiness.

It was an envious Glasgow body who said grudgingly, as he came out of
Waverley Station, and gazed along its splendid length for the first
time, "_Weel, wi' a' their haverin', it's but half a street,
onyway!_"--which always reminded me of the Western farmer who came
from his native plains to the beautiful Berkshire hills. "I've always
heard o' this scenery," he said. "Blamed if I can find any scenery;
but if there was, nobody could see it, there's so much high ground in
the way!"

To think that not so much more than a hundred years ago Princes Street
was naught but a straight country road, the "Lang Dykes" and the "Lang
Gait," as it was called.

We looked down over the grassy chasm that separates the New from the
Old Town; looked our first on Arthur's Seat, that crouching lion of a
mountain; saw the Corstorphine hills, and Calton Heights, and
Salisbury Crags, and finally that stupendous bluff of rock that
culminates so majestically in Edinburgh Castle. There is something
else which, like Susanna Crum's name, is absolutely and ideally right!
Stevenson calls it one of the most satisfactory crags in nature--a
Bass rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden, shaken by passing trains,
carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its
warlike shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the
new town. It dominates the whole countryside from water and land. The
men who would have the courage to build such a castle in such a spot
are all dead; all dead, and the world is infinitely more comfortable
without them. They are all gone, and no more like unto them will ever
be born, and we can most of us count upon dying safely in our beds, of
diseases bred of modern civilization. But I am glad that those old
barbarians, those rudimentary creatures working their way up into the
divine likeness, when they were not hanging, drawing, quartering,
torturing, and chopping their neighbors, and using their heads in
conventional patterns on the tops of gate-posts, did devote their
leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh Castle
could not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy
is consumed in bettering the condition of the "submerged tenth"! What
did they care about the "masses," that "regal race that is now no
more," when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling
them against the sky-line on the top of that great stone mountain! It
amuses me to think how much more picturesque they left the world, and
how much better we shall leave it; though if an artist were requested
to distribute individual awards to different generations, you could
never persuade him to give first prizes to the centuries that produced
steam laundries, trolleys, X rays, and sanitary plumbing.

What did they reck of Peace Congresses and bloodless arbitrations when
they lighted the beacon-fires, flaming out to the gudeman and his sons
ploughing or sowing in the Lang Dykes the news that their "ancient
enemies of England had crossed the Tweed"!

I am the most peaceful person in the world, but the Castle was too
much for my imagination. I was mounted and off and away from the first
moment I gazed upon its embattled towers, heard the pipers in the
distance, and saw the Black Watch swinging up the green steeps where
the huge fortress "holds its state." The modern world had vanished,
and my steed was galloping, galloping, galloping back into the
place-of-the-things-that-are-past, traversing centuries at every
leap.

"To arms! Let every banner in Scotland float defiance to the breeze!"
(So I heard my newborn imaginary spirit say to my real one.) "Yes, and
let the Deacon Convener unfurl the sacred Blue Blanket, under which
every liege burgher of the kingdom is bound to answer summons! The
bale-fires are gleaming, giving alarm to Hume, Haddington, Dunbar,
Dalkeith, and Eggerhope. Rise, Stirling, Fife, and the North! All
Scotland will be under arms in two hours. One bale-fire: the English
are in motion! Two: they are advancing! Four in a row: they are of
great strength! All men in arms west of Edinburgh muster there! All
eastward, at Haddington! And every Englishman caught in Scotland is
lawfully the prisoner of whoever takes him!" (What am I saying? I love
Englishmen, but the spell is upon me!) "Come on, Macduff!" (The only
suitable and familiar challenge my warlike tenant can summon at the
moment.) "I am the son of a Gael! My dagger is in my belt, and with
the guid broadsword at my side I can with one blow cut a man in twain!
My bow is cut from the wood of the yews of Glenure; the shaft is from
the wood of Lochetive, the feathers from the great golden eagles of
Lochtreigside! My arrowhead was made by the smiths of the race of
Macphedran! Come on, Macduff!"

And now a shopkeeper has filled his window with Royal Stuart tartans,
and I am instantly a Jacobite.

    "The Highland clans wi' sword in hand,
      Frae John o' Groat's to Airly,
    Hae to a man declar'd to stand
      Or fa' wi' Royal Charlie.
    Come through the heather, around him gather,
    Come Ronald, come Donald, come a' thegither,
    And crown your rightfu', lawfu' king,
      For wha'll be king but Charlie?"

It is the eve of the battle of Prestonpans. Is it not under the Rock
of Dunsappie on yonder Arthur's Seat that our Highland army will
encamp to-night? At dusk the prince will hold a council of his chiefs
and nobles (I am a chief and a noble), and at daybreak we shall march
through the old hedgerows and woods of Duddingston, pipes playing and
colors flying, bonnie Charlie at the head, his claymore drawn and the
scabbard flung away! (I mean awa'!)

    "Then here's a health to Charlie's cause,
    And be 't complete an' early;
    His very name my heart's blood warms
    To arms for Royal Charlie!

    "Come through the heather, around him gather,
    Come Ronald, come Donald, come a' thegither,
    And crown your rightfu', lawfu' king,
    For wha'll be king but Charlie?"

I hope that those in authority will never attempt to convene a peace
congress in Edinburgh, lest the influence of the Castle be too strong
for the delegates. They could not resist it nor turn their backs upon
it, since, unlike other ancient fortresses, it is but a stone's throw
from the front windows of all the hotels. They might mean never so
well, but they would end by buying dirk hat-pins and claymore brooches
for their wives, their daughters would all run after the kilted
regiment and marry as many of the pipers as asked them, and before
night they would all be shouting with the noble Fitz-Eustace,

    "Where's the coward who would not dare
    To fight for such a land?"

While I was rhapsodizing, Salemina and Francesca were shopping in the
Arcade, buying some of the cairngorms, and Tam O'Shanter purses, and
models of Burns's cottage, and copies of "Marmion" in plaided covers,
and thistle belt-buckles, and bluebell penwipers, with which we
afterwards inundated our native land. When my warlike mood had passed,
I sat down upon the steps of the Scott monument and watched the
passers-by in a sort of waking dream. I suppose they were the usual
professors and doctors and ministers who are wont to walk up and down
the Edinburgh streets, with a sprinkling of lairds and leddies of high
degree and a few Americans looking at the shop windows to choose their
clan-tartans; but for me they did not exist. In their places stalked
the ghosts of kings and queens and knights and nobles: Columba, Abbot
of Iona; Queen Margaret and Malcolm--she the sweetest saint in all the
throng; King David riding towards Drumsheugh forest on Holy Rood-day,
with his horns and hounds and huntsmen following close behind; Anne of
Denmark and Jingling Geordie; Mary Stuart in all her girlish beauty,
with the four Maries in her train; and lurking behind, Bothwell, "that
ower sune stepfaither," and the murdered Rizzio and Darnley; John
Knox, in his black Geneva cloak; Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora
Macdonald; lovely Annabella Drummond; Robert the Bruce; George Heriot
with a banner bearing on it the words "I distribute chearfully;" James
I. carrying The King's Quair; Oliver Cromwell; and a long line of
heroes, martyrs, humble saints, and princely knaves.

Behind them, regardless of precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and the
Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Dr. John Brown and Thomas
Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay and Sir
Walter; and is it not a proof of the Wizard's magic art, that side by
side with the wraiths of these real people walked, or seemed to walk,
the Fair Maid of Perth, Jeanie Deans, Meg Merrilies, Guy Mannering,
Ellen, Marmion, and a host of others so sweetly familiar and so
humanly dear that the very street-laddies could have named and greeted
them as they passed by?




IV


Life at Mrs. M'Collop's apartments in 22, Breadalbane Terrace is about
as simple, comfortable, dignified, and delightful as it well can be.

Mrs. M'Collop herself is neat, thrifty, precise, tolerably genial, and
"verra releegious."

Her partner, who is also the cook, is a person introduced to us as
Miss Diggity. We afterwards learned that this is spelled Dalgety, but
it is not considered good form, in Scotland, to pronounce the names of
persons and places as they are written. When, therefore, I allude to
the cook, which will be as seldom as possible, I shall speak of her as
Miss Diggity-Dalgety, so that I shall be presenting her correctly both
to the eye and to the ear, and giving her at the same time a
hyphenated name, a thing which is a secret object of aspiration in
Great Britain.

In selecting our own letters and parcels from the common stock on the
hall table, I perceive that most of our fellow lodgers are hyphenated
ladies, whose visiting-cards diffuse the intelligence that in their
single persons two ancient families and fortunes are united. On the
ground floor are the Misses Hepburn-Sciennes (pronounced
Hebburn-Sheens); on the floor above us are Miss Colquhoun (Cohoon) and
her cousin Miss Cockburn-Sinclair (Coburn-Sinkler). As soon as the
Hepburn-Sciennes depart, Mrs. M'Collop expects Mrs. Menzies of
Kilconquhar, of whom we shall speak as Mrs. Mingess of Kinyukkar.
There is not a man in the house; even the Boots is a girl, so that 22,
Breadalbane Terrace is as truly a _castra puellarum_ as was ever the
Castle of Edinburgh with its maiden princesses in the olden time.

We talked with Miss Diggity-Dalgety on the evening of our first day at
Mrs. M'Collop's, when she came up to know our commands. As Francesca
and Salemina were both in the room, I determined to be as Scotch as
possible, for it is Salemina's proud boast that she is taken for a
native of every country she visits.

"We shall not be entertaining at present, Miss Diggity," I said, "so
you can give us just the ordinary dishes,--no doubt you are accustomed
to them: scones, baps or bannocks with marmalade, finnan-haddie or
kippered herrings for breakfast; tea,--of course we never touch coffee
in the morning" (here Francesca started with surprise); "porridge, and
we like them well boiled, please" (I hope she noted the plural
pronoun; Salemina did, and blanched with envy); "minced collops for
luncheon, or a nice little black-faced chop; Scotch broth, peas brose
or cockyleekie soup, at dinner, and haggis now and then, with a cold
shape for dessert. That is about the sort of thing we are accustomed
to,--just plain Scotch living."

I was impressing Miss Diggity-Dalgety,--I could see that clearly; but
Francesca spoiled the effect by inquiring, maliciously, if we could
sometimes have a howtowdy wi' drappit eggs, or her favorite dish, wee
grumphie wi' neeps.

Here Salemina was obliged to poke the fire in order to conceal her
smiles, and the cook probably suspected that Francesca found howtowdy
in the Scotch glossary; but we amused each other vastly, and that is
our principal object in life.

Miss Diggity-Dalgety's forbears must have been exposed to foreign
influences, for she interlards her culinary conversation with French
terms, and we have discovered that this is quite common. A "jigget" of
mutton is of course a _gigot_, and we have identified an "ashet" as an
_assiette_. The "petticoat tails" she requested me to buy at the
confectioner's were somewhat more puzzling, but when they were finally
purchased by Susanna Crum they appeared to be ordinary little cakes;
perhaps, therefore, _petits gastels_, since gastel is an old form of
_gâteau_, as was _bel_ for _beau_. Susanna, on her part, speaks of the
wardrobe in my bedroom as an "awmry." It certainly contains no
weapons, so cannot be an armory, and we conjecture that her word must
be a corruption of _armoire_.

"That was a remarkable touch about the black-faced chop," laughed
Salemina, when Miss Diggity-Dalgety had retired; "not that I believe
they ever say it."

"I am sure they must," I asserted stoutly, "for I passed a flesher's
on my way home, and saw a sign with 'Prime Black-faced Mutton' printed
on it. I also saw 'Fed Veal,' but I forgot to ask the cook for it."

"We ought really to have kept house in Edinburgh," observed Francesca,
looking up from "The Scotsman." "One can get a 'self-contained
residential flat' for twenty pounds a month. We are such an
enthusiastic trio that a self-contained flat would be everything to
us; and if it were not fully furnished, here is a firm that wishes to
sell a 'composite bed' for six pounds, and a 'gent's stuffed easy' for
five. Added to these inducements there is somebody who advertises that
parties who intend 'displenishing' at the Whit Term would do well to
consult him, as he makes a specialty of second-handed furniture and
'cyclealities.' What are 'cyclealities,' Susanna?" (She had just come
in with coals.)

"I couldna say, mam."

"Thank you; no, you need not ask Mrs. M'Collop; it is of no
consequence."

Susanna Crum is a most estimable young woman, clean, respectful,
willing, capable, and methodical, but as a Bureau of Information she
is painfully inadequate. Barring this single limitation she seems to
be a treasure-house of all good practical qualities; and being thus
clad and panoplied in virtue, why should she be so timid and
self-distrustful?

She wears an expression which can mean only one of two things: either
she has heard of the national tomahawk and is afraid of violence on
our part, or else her mother was frightened before she was born. This
applies in general to her walk and voice and manner, but is it fear
that prompts her eternal "I couldna say," or is it perchance Scotch
caution and prudence? Is she afraid of projecting her personality too
indecently far? Is it the influence of the "catecheesm" on her early
youth? Is it the indirect effect of heresy trials on her imagination?
Does she remember the thumb-screw of former generations? At all
events, she will neither affirm nor deny, and I am putting her to all
sorts of tests, hoping to discover finally whether she is an accident,
an exaggeration, or a type.

Salemina thinks that our American accent may confuse her. Of course
she means Francesca's and mine, for she has none; although we have
tempered ours so much for the sake of the natives, that we can
scarcely understand each other any more. As for Susanna's own accent,
she comes from the heart of Aberdeenshire, and her intonation is
beyond my power to reproduce.

We naturally wish to identify all the national dishes; so, "Is this
cockle soup, Susanna?" I ask her, as she passes me the plate at
dinner.

"I couldna say."

"This vegetable is new to me, Susanna; is it perhaps sea-kail?"

"I canna say, mam."

Then finally, in despair, as she handed me a boiled potato one day, I
fixed my searching Yankee brown eyes on her blue-Presbyterian,
non-committal ones and asked, "What is this vegetable, Susanna?"

In an instant she withdrew herself, her soul, her ego, so utterly that
I felt myself gazing at an inscrutable stone image, as she replied, "I
couldna say, mam."

This was too much! Her mother may have been frightened, very badly
frightened, but this was more than I could endure without protest. The
plain boiled potato is practically universal. It is not only common to
all temperate climates, but it has permeated all classes of society. I
am confident that the plain boiled potato has been one of the chief
constituents in the building up of that frame in which Susanna Crum
conceals her opinions and emotions. I remarked, therefore, as an
apparent afterthought, "Why, it is a potato, is it not, Susanna?"

What do you think she replied, when thus hunted into a corner, pushed
against a wall, driven to the very confines of her personal and
national liberty? She subjected the potato to a second careful
scrutiny, and answered, "I wouldna say it's no!"

Now there is no inherited physical terror in this. It is the
concentrated essence of intelligent reserve, caution, and obstinacy;
it is a conscious intellectual hedging; it is a dogged and determined
attempt to build up barriers of defense between the questioner and the
questionee: it must be, therefore, the offspring of the catechism and
the heresy trial.

Once again, after establishing an equally obvious fact, I succeeded in
wringing from her the reluctant admission, "It depends," but she was
so shattered by the bulk and force of this outgo, so fearful that in
some way she had imperiled her life or reputation, so anxious
concerning the effect that her unwilling testimony might have upon
unborn generations, that she was of no real service the rest of the
day.

I wish that the Lord Advocate, or some modern counterpart of
Braxfield, the hanging judge, would summon Susanna Crum as a witness
in an important case. He would need his longest plummet to sound the
depths of her consciousness.

I have had no legal experience, but I can imagine the scene.

"Is the prisoner your father, Susanna Crum?"

"I couldna say, my lord."

"You have not understood the question, Susanna. Is the prisoner your
father?"

"I couldna say, my lord."

"Come, come, my girl! you must answer the questions put you by the
court. You have been an inmate of the prisoner's household since your
earliest consciousness. He provided you with food, lodging, and
clothing during your infancy and early youth. You have seen him on
annual visits to your home, and watched him as he performed the usual
parental functions for your younger brothers and sisters. I therefore
repeat, is the prisoner your father, Susanna Crum?"

"I wouldna say he's no, my lord."

"This is really beyond credence! What do you conceive to be the idea
involved in the word 'father,' Susanna Crum?"

"It depends, my lord."

And this, a few hundred years earlier, would have been the natural and
effective moment for the thumb-screws.

I do not wish to be understood as defending these uncomfortable
appliances. They would never have been needed to elicit information
from me, for I should have spent my nights inventing matter to confess
in the daytime. I feel sure that I should have poured out such floods
of confessions and retractations that if all Scotland had been one
listening ear it could not have heard my tale. I am only wondering if,
in the extracting of testimony from the common mind, the thumb-screw
might not have been more necessary with some nations than with
others.




V


Invitations had been pouring in upon us since the delivery of our
letters of introduction, and it was now the evening of our début in
Edinburgh society. Francesca had volunteered to perform the task of
leaving cards, ordering a private victoria for the purpose, and
arraying herself in purple and fine linen.

"Much depends upon the first impression," she had said. "Miss
Hamilton's 'party' may not be gifted, but it is well dressed. My hope
is that some of our future hostesses will be looking from the
second-story front windows. If they are, I can assure them in advance
that I shall be a national advertisement."

It is needless to remark that as it began to rain heavily as she was
leaving the house, she was obliged to send back the open carriage, and
order, to save time, one of the public cabs from the stand in the
Terrace.

"Would you mind having the lamiter, being first in line?" asked
Susanna of Salemina, who had transmitted the command.

When Salemina fails to understand anything, the world is kept in
complete ignorance,--least of all would she stoop to ask a humble maid
servant to translate the vernacular of the country; so she replied
affably, "Certainly, Susanna, that is the kind we always prefer. I
suppose it is covered?"

Francesca did not notice, until her coachman alighted to deliver the
first letter and cards, that he had one club foot and one wooden leg;
it was then that the full significance of "lamiter" came to her. He
was covered, however, as Salemina had supposed, and the occurrence
gave us a precious opportunity of chaffing that dungeon of learning.
He was tolerably alert and vigorous, too, although he certainly did
not impart elegance to a vehicle, and he knew every street in the
court end of Edinburgh, and every close and wynd in the Old Town. On
this our first meeting with him, he faltered only when Francesca asked
him last of all to drive to "Kildonan House, Helmsdale;" supposing,
not unnaturally, that it was as well known an address as Morningside
House, Tipperlinn, whence she had just come. The lamiter had never
heard of Kildonan House nor of Helmsdale, and he had driven in the
streets of Auld Reekie for thirty years. None of the drivers whom he
consulted could supply any information; Susanna Crum couldna say that
she had ever heard of it, nor could Mrs. M'Collop nor Miss
Diggity-Dalgety. It was reserved for Lady Baird to explain that
Helmsdale was two hundred and eighty miles north, and that Kildonan
House was ten miles from the Helmsdale railway station, so that the
poor lamiter would have had a weary drive even had he known the way.
The friends who had given us letters to Mr. and Mrs. Jameson-Inglis
(Jimmyson-Ingals) must have expected us either to visit John o'
Groats on the northern border, and drop in on Kildonan House _en
route_, or to send our note of introduction by post and await an
invitation to pass the summer. At all events, the anecdote proved very
pleasing to our Edinburgh acquaintances. I hardly know whether, if
they should visit America, they would enjoy tales of their own
stupidity as hugely as they did the tales of ours, but they really
were very appreciative in this particular, and it is but justice to
ourselves to say that we gave them every opportunity for enjoyment.

But I must go back to our first grand dinner in Scotland. We were
dressed at quarter past seven, when, in looking at the invitation
again, we discovered that the dinner-hour was eight o'clock, not
seven-thirty. Susanna did not happen to know the exact or approximate
distance to Fotheringay Crescent, but the maiden Boots affirmed that
it was only two minutes' drive, so we sat down in front of the fire to
chat.

It was Lady Baird's birthday feast to which we had been bidden, and we
had done our best to honor the occasion. We had prepared a large
bouquet tied with the Maclean tartan (Lady Baird is a Maclean), and
had printed in gold letters on one of the ribbons, "Another for
Hector," the battle-cry of the clan. We each wore a sprig of holly,
because it is the badge of the family, while I added a girdle and
shoulder-knot of tartan velvet to my pale green gown, and borrowed
Francesca's emerald necklace, persuading her that she was too young to
wear such jewels in the old country.

Francesca was miserably envious that she had not thought of tartans
first. "You may consider yourself 'gey an' fine,' all covered over
with Scotch plaid, but I wouldn't be so 'kenspeckle' for worlds!" she
said, using expressions borrowed from Mrs. M'Collop; "and as for
disguising your nationality, do not flatter yourself that you look
like anything but an American. I forgot to tell you the conversation I
overheard in the tram this morning, between a mother and daughter, who
were talking about us, I dare say. 'Have they any proper frocks for so
large a party, Bella?' asked the mother.

"'I thought I explained in the beginning, mamma, that they are
Americans.'

"'Still, you know they are only traveling,--just passing through, as
it were; they may not be familiar with our customs, and we do want our
party to be a smart one.'

"'Wait until you see them, mamma, and you will probably feel like
hiding your diminished head! It is my belief that if an American lady
takes a half-hour journey in a tram she carries full evening dress and
a diamond necklace, in case anything should happen on the way. I am
not in the least nervous about their appearance. I only hope that they
will not be too exuberant; American girls are so frightfully vivacious
and informal, I always feel as if I were being taken by the throat!'"

"A picturesque, though rather vigorous expression; however, it does no
harm to be perfectly dressed," said Salemina consciously, putting a
steel embroidered slipper on the fender and settling the holly in the
silver folds of her gown; "then when they discover that we are all
well bred, and that one of us is intelligent, it will be the more
credit to the country that gave us birth."

"Of course it is impossible to tell what country did give _you_
birth," retorted Francesca, "but that will only be to your
advantage--away from home!"

Francesca is inflexibly, almost aggressively American, but Salemina is
a citizen of the world. If the United States should be involved in a
war, I am confident that Salemina would be in front with the other
Gatling guns, for in that case a principle would be at stake; but in
all lesser matters she is extremely unprejudiced. She prefers German
music, Italian climate, French dressmakers, English tailors, Japanese
manners, and American--American something,--I have forgotten just
what; it is either the ice-cream soda or the form of government,--I
can't remember which.

"I wonder why they named it 'Fotheringay' Crescent," mused Francesca.
"Some association with Mary Stuart, of course. Poor, poor, pretty
lady! A free queen only six years, and think of the number of beds she
slept in, and the number of trees she planted; we have already seen, I
am afraid to say how many. When did she govern, when did she scheme,
above all when did she flirt, with all this racing and chasing over
the country? Mrs. M'Collop calls Anne of Denmark a 'sad scattercash'
and Mary an 'awfu' gadabout,' and I am inclined to agree with her. By
the way, when she was making my bed this morning, she told me that her
mother claimed descent from the Stewarts of Appin, whoever they may
be. She apologized for Queen Mary's defects as if she were a distant
family connection. If so, then the famous Stuart charm has been lost
somewhere, for Mrs. M'Collop certainly possesses no alluring curves of
temperament."

"I am going to select some distinguished ancestors this very minute,
before I go to my first Edinburgh dinner," said I decidedly. "It seems
hard that ancestors should have everything to do with settling our
nationality and our position in life, and we not have a word to say.
How nice it would be to select one's own after one had arrived at
years of discretion, or to adopt different ones according to the
country one chanced to be visiting! I am going to do it; it is
unusual, but there must be a pioneer in every good movement. Let me
think: do help me, Salemina! I am a Hamilton to begin with; I might be
descended from the logical Sir William himself, and thus become the
idol of the university set!"

"He died only about thirty years ago, and you would have to be his
daughter: that would never do," said Salemina. "Why don't you take
Thomas Hamilton, Earl of Melrose and Haddington? He was Secretary of
State, King's Advocate, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and
all sorts of fine things. He was the one King James used to call 'Tam
o' the Cowgate.'"

"Perfectly delightful! I don't care so much about his other titles,
but 'Tam o' the Cowgate' is irresistible. I will take him. He was
my--what was he?"

"He was at least your great-great-great-great-grandfather; that is a
safe distance. Then there's that famous Jenny Geddes, who flung her
fauld-stule at the Dean in St. Giles's,--she was a Hamilton, too, if
you fancy her!"

"Yes, I'll take her with pleasure," I responded thankfully. "Of course
I don't know why she flung the stool,--it may have been very
reprehensible; but there is always good stuff in stool-flingers; it's
the sort of spirit one likes to inherit in diluted form. Now whom will
you take?"

"I haven't even a peg on which to hang a Scottish ancestor," said
Salemina disconsolately.

"Oh, nonsense! think harder. Anybody will do as a starting-point; only
you must be honorable and really show relationship, as I did with
Jenny and Tam."

"My aunt Mary-Emma married a Lindsay," ventured Salemina hesitatingly.

"That will do," I answered delightedly.

    "'The Gordons gay in English blude
    They wat their hose and shoon;
    The Lindsays flew like fire aboot
    Till a' the fray was dune.'

You can play that you are one of the famous 'licht Lindsays,' and you
can look up the particular ancestor in your big book. Now, Francesca,
it's your turn!"

"I am American to the backbone," she declared, with insufferable
dignity. "I do not desire any foreign ancestors."

"Francesca!" I expostulated. "Do you mean to tell me that you can dine
with a lineal descendant of Sir Fitzroy Donald Maclean, Baronet, of
Duart and Morven, and not make any effort to trace your genealogy back
further than your parents?"

"If you goad me to desperation," she answered, "I will wear an
American flag in my hair, declare that my father is a Red Indian, or a
pork-packer, and talk about the superiority of our checking system and
hotels all the evening. I don't want to go, anyway. It is sure to be
stiff and ceremonious, and the man who takes me in will ask me the
population of Chicago and the amount of wheat we exported last
year,--he always does."

"I can't see why he should," said I. "I am sure you don't look as if
you knew."

"My looks have thus far proved no protection," she replied sadly.
"Salemina is so flexible, and you are so dramatic, that you enter into
all these experiences with zest. You already more than half believe in
that Tam o' the Cowgate story. But there'll be nothing for me in
Edinburgh society; it will be all clergymen"--

"Ministers," interjected Salemina.

--"all ministers and professors. My Redfern gown will be
unappreciated, and my Worth evening frocks worse than wasted!"

"There are a few thousand medical students," I said encouragingly,
"and all the young advocates, and a sprinkling of military men,--they
know Worth frocks."

"And," continued Salemina bitingly, "there will always be, even in an
intellectual city like Edinburgh, a few men who continue to escape all
the developing influences about them, and remain commonplace,
conventional manikins, devoted to dancing and flirting. Never fear,
they will find you!"

This sounds harsh, but nobody minds Salemina, least of all Francesca,
who well knows she is the apple of that spinster's eye. But at this
moment Susanna opens the door (timorously, as if there might be a
panther behind it) and announces the cab (in the same tone in which
she would announce the beast); we pick up our draperies, and are
whirled off by the lamiter to dine with the Scottish nobility.




VI


It was the Princess Dashkoff who said, in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, that of all the societies of men of talent she had
met with in her travels, Edinburgh's was the first in point of
abilities.

One might make the same remark to-day, perhaps, and not depart widely
from the truth. One does not find, however, as many noted names as are
associated with the annals of the Cape and Poker Clubs or the
Crochallan Fencibles, those famous groups of famous men who met for
relaxation (and intoxication, I should think) at the old Isle of Man
Arms or in Dawney's Tavern in the Anchor Close. These groups included
such shining lights as Robert Fergusson the poet, and Adam Ferguson
the historian and philosopher, Gavin Wilson, Sir Henry Raeburn, David
Hume, Erskine, Lords Newton, Gillies, Monboddo, Hailes, Kames, Henry
Mackenzie, and the Ploughman Poet himself, who has kept alive the
memory of the Crochallans in many a jovial verse like that in which he
describes Smellie, the eccentric philosopher and printer:--

    "Shrewd Willie Smellie to Crochallan came,
    The old cocked hat, the grey surtout the same,
    His bristling beard just rising in its might;
    'Twas four long nights and days to shaving night;"

or in the characteristic picture of William Dunbar, a wit of the time,
and the merriest of the Fencibles:--

    "As I cam by Crochallan
      I cannily keekit ben;
    Rattlin', roarin' Willie
      Was sitting at yon boord en';
    Sitting at yon boord en',
      And amang guid companie!
    Rattlin', roarin' Willie,
      Ye're welcome hame to me!"

or in the verses on Creech, Burns's publisher, who left Edinburgh for
a time in 1789. The "Willies," by the way, seem to be especially
inspiring to the Scottish balladists.

    "Oh, Willie was a witty wight,
    And had o' things an unco slight!
    Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight
      And trig and braw;
    But now they'll busk her like a fright--
      Willie's awa'!"

I think perhaps the gatherings of the present time are neither quite
as gay nor quite as brilliant as those of Burns's day, when

    "Willie brewed a peck o' maut,
    An' Rob an' Allan cam to pree;"

but the ideal standard of those meetings seems to be voiced in the
lines:--

    "Wha last beside his chair shall fa',
    He is the king amang us three!"

As they sit in their chairs nowadays to the very end of the feast,
there is doubtless joined with modern sobriety a _soupçon_ of modern
dullness and discretion.

To an American the great charm of Edinburgh is its leisurely
atmosphere: "not the leisure of a village arising from the deficiency
of ideas and motives, but the leisure of a city reposing grandly on
tradition and history; which has done its work, and does not require
to weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or smelt its own
iron."

We were reminded of this more than once, and it never failed to
depress us properly. If one had ever lived in Pittsburg, Fall River,
or Kansas City, I should think it would be almost impossible to
maintain self-respect in a place like Edinburgh, where the citizens
"are released from the vulgarizing dominion of the hour." Whenever one
of Auld Reekie's great men took this tone with me, I always felt as
though I were the germ in a half-hatched egg, and he were an aged and
lordly cock gazing at me pityingly through my shell. He, lucky
creature, had lived through all the struggles which I was to undergo;
he, indeed, was released from "the vulgarizing dominion of the hour;"
but I, poor thing, must grow and grow, and keep pecking at my shell,
in order to achieve existence.

Sydney Smith says in one of his letters, "Never shall I forget the
happy days passed there [in Edinburgh], amidst odious smells,
barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and the most
enlightened and cultivated understandings." His only criticism of the
conversation of that day (1797-1802) concerned itself with the
prevalence of that form of Scotch humor which was called _wut_, and
with the disputations and dialectics. We were more fortunate than
Sydney Smith, because Edinburgh has outgrown its odious smells,
barbarous sounds, and bad suppers, and, wonderful to relate, has kept
its excellent hearts and its enlightened and cultivated
understandings. As for mingled _wut_ and dialectics, where can one
find a better foundation for dinner-table conversation?

The hospitable board itself presents no striking differences from our
own, save the customs of serving sweets in soup-plates with
dessert-spoons, of a smaller number of forks on parade, of the
invariable fish-knife at each plate, of the prevalent "savory" and
"cold shape," and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess
carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of
high degree severing the joints of chickens and birds most daintily,
while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how
greatly times have changed for the better since the ages of strife and
bloodshed, when Scottish nobles

    "Carved at the meal with gloves of steel,
    And drank their wine through helmets barred."

The Scotch butler is not in the least like an English one. No man
could be as respectable as he looks, not even an elder of the kirk,
whom he resembles closely. He hands your plate as if it were a
contribution-box, and in his moments of ease, when he stands behind
the "maister," I am always expecting him to pronounce a benediction.
The English butler, when he wishes to avoid the appearance of
listening to the conversation, gazes with level eye into vacancy; the
Scotch butler looks distinctly heavenward, as if he were brooding on
the principle of coördinate jurisdiction with mutual subordination. It
would be impossible for me to deny the key of the wine-cellar to a
being so steeped in sanctity, but it has been done, I am told, in
certain rare and isolated cases.

As for toilets, the men dress like all other men (alas, and alas, that
we should say it, for we were continually hoping for a kilt!), though
there seems to be no survival of the finical Lord Napier's spirit.
Perhaps you remember that Lord and Lady Napier arrived at Castlemilk
in Lanarkshire with the intention of staying a week, but announced
next morning that a circumstance had occurred which rendered it
indispensable to return without delay to their seat in Selkirkshire.
This was the only explanation given, but it was afterwards discovered
that Lord Napier's valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing
up a set of neck-cloths which did not correspond _in point of date_
with the shirts they accompanied!

The ladies of the "smart set" in Edinburgh wear French fripperies and
_chiffons_, as do their sisters everywhere, but the other women of
society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London,
Paris, or New York. The sobriety of taste and severity of style that
characterize Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's dubieties, to
the _haar_, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the
presence of three branches of the Presbyterian church among them; the
society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds
of Presbyterianism at the same time must have its chilly moments.

In Lord Cockburn's time the "dames of high and aristocratic breed"
must have been sufficiently awake to feminine frivolities to be both
gorgeously and extravagantly arrayed. I do not know in all literature
a more delicious and lifelike word-portrait than Lord Cockburn gives
of Mrs. Rochead, the Lady of Inverleith, in the Memorials. It is quite
worthy to hang beside a Raeburn canvas; one can scarce say more.

"Except Mrs. Siddons in some of her displays of magnificent royalty,
nobody could sit down like the Lady of Inverleith. She would sail like
a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in
all the accompaniments of fans, ear-rings and finger-rings, falling
sleeves, scent-bottle, embroidered bag, hoop, and train; managing all
this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan
does its plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large
sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion,
cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to
lay themselves over it, like summer waves. The descent from her
carriage, too, where she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a
display which no one in these days could accomplish or even fancy. The
mulberry-colored coach, apparently not too large for what it
contained, though she alone was in it; the handsome, jolly coachman
and his splendid hammer-cloth loaded with lace; the two respectful
liveried footmen, one on each side of the richly carpeted step,--these
were lost sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the Lady of
Inverleith came down and touched the earth."

My right-hand neighbor at Lady Baird's dinner was surprised at my
quoting Lord Cockburn. One's attendant squires here always seem
surprised when one knows anything; but they are always delighted, too,
so that the amazement is less trying. True, I had read the Memorials
only the week before, and had never heard of them previous to that
time; but that detail, according to my theories, makes no real
difference. The woman who knows how and when to "read up," who reads
because she wants to be in sympathy with a new environment; the woman
who has wit and perspective enough to be stimulated by novel
conditions and kindled by fresh influences, who is susceptible to the
vibrations of other people's history, is safe to be fairly intelligent
and extremely agreeable, if only she is sufficiently modest. I think
my neighbor found me thoroughly delightful after he discovered my
point of view. He was an earl; and it always takes an earl a certain
length of time to understand me. I scarcely know why, for I certainly
should not think it courteous to interpose any real barriers between
the nobility and that portion of the "masses" represented in my humble
person.

It seemed to me at first that the earl did not apply himself to the
study of my national peculiarities with much assiduity, but wasted
considerable time in gazing at Francesca, who was opposite. She is
certainly very handsome, and I never saw her lovelier than at that
dinner; her eyes were like stars, and her cheeks and lips a splendid
crimson, for she was quarreling with her attendant cavalier about the
relative merits of Scotland and America, and they apparently ceased to
speak to each other after the salad.

When the earl had sufficiently piqued me by his devotion to his dinner
and his glances at Francesca, I began a systematic attempt to achieve
his (transient) subjugation. Of course I am ardently attached to
Willie Beresford and prefer him to any earl in Britain, but one's
self-respect demands something in the way of food. I could see
Salemina at the far end of the table radiant with success, the W. S.
at her side bending ever and anon to catch the (artificial) pearls of
thought that dropped from her lips. "Miss Hamilton appears simple" (I
thought I heard her say); "but in reality she is as deep as the Currie
Brig!" Now where did she get that allusion? And again, when the W. S.
asked her whither she was going when she left Edinburgh, "I hardly
know," she replied pensively. "I am waiting for the shade of Montrose
to direct me, as the Viscount Dundee said to your Duke of Gordon." The
entranced Scotsman little knew that she had perfected this style of
conversation by long experience with the Q. C.'s of England. Talk
about my being as deep as the Currie Brig (whatever it may be);
Salemina is deeper than the Atlantic Ocean! I shall take pains to
inform her Writer to the Signet, after dinner, that she eats sugar on
her porridge every morning; that will show him her nationality
conclusively.

The earl took the greatest interest in my new ancestors, and approved
thoroughly of my choice. He thinks I must have been named for Lady
Penelope Belhaven, who lived in Leven Lodge, one of the country villas
of the Earls of Leven, from whom he himself is descended. "Does that
make us relatives?" I asked. "Relatives, most assuredly," he replied,
"but not too near to destroy the charm of friendship."

He thought it a great deal nicer to select one's own forbears than to
allow them all the responsibility, and said it would save a world of
trouble if the method could be universally adopted. He added that he
should be glad to part with a good many of his, but doubted whether I
would accept them, as they were "rather a scratch lot." (I use his own
language, which I thought delightfully easy for a belted earl.) He was
charmed with the story of Francesca and the lamiter, and offered to
drive me to Kildonan House, Helmsdale, on the first fine day. I told
him he was quite safe in making the proposition, for we had already
had the fine day, and we understood that the climate had exhausted
itself and retired for the season.

The gentleman on my right, a distinguished Dean of the Thistle, gave
me a few moments' discomfort by telling me that the old custom of
"rounds" of toasts still prevailed at Lady Baird's on formal
occasions, and that before the ladies retired every one would be
called upon for appropriate "sentiments."

"What sort of sentiments?" I inquired, quite overcome with terror.

"Oh, epigrammatic sentences expressive of moral feelings or virtues,"
replied my neighbor easily. "They are not quite as formal and
hackneyed now as they were in the olden time, when some of the
favorite toasts were 'May the pleasure of the evening bear the
reflections of the morning!' 'May the friends of our youth be the
companions of our old age!' 'May the honest heart never feel
distress!' 'May the hand of charity wipe the eye of sorrow!'"

"I can never do it in the world!" I ejaculated. "Oh, one ought never,
never to leave one's own country! A light-minded and cynical English
gentleman told me that I should frequently be called upon to read
hymns and recite verses of Scripture at family dinners in Edinburgh
and I hope I am always prepared to do that; but nobody warned me that
I should have to evolve epigrammatic sentiments on the spur of the
moment."

My confusion was so evident that the good dean relented and confessed
that he was imposing upon my ignorance. He made me laugh heartily at
the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly. He was called upon in his
turn, at a large party, and having nothing to aid him in an exercise
to which he was new save the example of his predecessors, lifted his
glass after much writhing and groaning and gave, "The reflection of
the moon in the cawm bosom of the lake!"

At this moment Lady Baird glanced at me, and we all rose to go into
the drawing-room; but on the way from my chair to the door, whither
the earl escorted me, he said gallantly, "I suppose the men in your
country do not take champagne at dinner? I cannot fancy their craving
it when dining beside an American woman!"

That was charming, though he did pay my country a compliment at my
expense. One likes, of course, to have the type recognized as fine; at
the same time his remark would have been more flattering if it had
been less sweeping.

When I remember that he offered me his ancestors, asked me to drive
two hundred and eighty miles, and likened me to champagne, I feel
that, with my heart already occupied and my hand promised, I could
hardly have accomplished more in the course of a single dinner-hour.




VII


Francesca's experiences were not so fortunate; indeed, I have never
seen her more out of sorts than she was during our long chat over the
fire, after our return to Breadalbane Terrace.

"How did you get on with your delightful minister?" inquired Salemina
of the young lady, as she flung her unoffending wrap over the back of
a chair. "He was quite the handsomest man in the room; who is he?"

"He is the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable,
condescending, ill-tempered prig I ever met!"

"Why, Francesca!" I exclaimed. "Lady Baird speaks of him as her
favorite nephew, and says he is full of charm."

"He is just as full of charm as he was when I met him," returned the
girl nonchalantly; "that is, he parted with none of it this evening.
He was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and oh! so Scotch! I believe if
one punctured him with a hat-pin, oatmeal would fly into the air!"

"Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the
immeasurable advantages of our sleeping-car system, the superiority of
our fast-running elevators, and the height of our buildings?" observed
Salemina.

"I mentioned them," Francesca answered evasively.

"You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate?"

"Oh, I alluded to it; but only when he said that our hot summers must
be insufferable."

"I suppose you repeated the remark you made at luncheon, that the
ladies you had seen in Princes Street were excessively plain?"

"Yes, I did!" she replied hotly; "but that was because he said that
American girls generally looked bloodless and frail. He asked if it
were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Wasn't that
unendurable? I answered that those were the chief solid articles of
food, but that after their complexions were established, so to speak,
their parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the
diet."

"What did he say to that?" I asked.

"Oh, he said, 'Quite so, quite so;' that was his invariable response
to all my witticisms. Then when I told him casually that the shops
looked very small and dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as
many tartans and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked
that as to the latter point, the American season had not opened yet!
Presently he asserted that no royal city in Europe could boast ten
centuries of such glorious and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said
it did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything
in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no
idea of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He
retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint
of the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a
Goethe, Boston without its twang!"

"Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. "He
never could have said 'twang' unless you had tried him beyond
measure!"

"I dare say I did; he is easily tried," returned Francesca. "I asked
him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in Boston. 'No,' he said, 'it
is not necessary to _go_ there! And while we are discussing these
matters,' he went on, 'how is your American dyspepsia these
days,--have you decided what is the cause of it?'

"'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash; 'we have always taken in
more foreigners than we could assimilate!' I wanted to tell him that
one Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere,
but I restrained myself."

"I am glad you did restrain yourself--once," exclaimed Salemina. "What
a tactful person the Reverend Ronald must be, if you have reported him
faithfully! Why didn't you give him up, and turn to your other
neighbor?"

"I did, as soon as I could with courtesy; but the man on my left was
the type that always haunts me at dinners; if the hostess hasn't one
on her visiting-list, she imports one for the occasion. He asked me at
once of what material the Brooklyn Bridge is made. I told him I really
didn't know. Why should I? I seldom go over it. Then he asked me
whether it was a suspension bridge or a cantilever. Of course I didn't
know; I am not an engineer."

"You are so tactlessly, needlessly candid," I expostulated. "Why
didn't you say boldly that the Brooklyn Bridge is a wooden cantilever,
with gutta-percha braces? He didn't know, or he wouldn't have asked
you. He couldn't find out until he reached home, and you would never
have seen him again; and if you had, and he had taunted you, you could
have laughed vivaciously and said you were chaffing. That is my
method, and it is the only way to preserve life in a foreign country.
Even my earl, who did not thirst for information (fortunately), asked
me the population of the Yellowstone Park, and I simply told him three
hundred thousand, at a venture."

"That would never have satisfied my neighbor," said Francesca.
"Finding me in such a lamentable state of ignorance, he explained the
principle of his own stupid Forth Bridge to me. When I said I
understood perfectly, just to get into shallower water, where we
wouldn't need any bridge, the Reverend Ronald joined in the
conversation, and asked me to repeat the explanation to him. Naturally
I couldn't, and he knew that I couldn't when he asked me, so the
bridge man (I don't know his name, and don't care to know it) drew a
diagram of the national idol on his dinner-card and gave a dull and
elaborate lecture upon it. Here is the card, and now that three hours
have intervened I cannot tell which way to turn the drawing so as to
make the bridge right side up; if there is anything puzzling in the
world, it is these architectural plans and diagrams. I am going to pin
it to the wall and ask the Reverend Ronald which way it goes."

"Do you mean that he will call upon us?" we cried in concert.

"He asked if he might come and continue our 'stimulating'
conversation, and as Lady Baird was standing by I could hardly say no.
I am sure of one thing: that before I finish with him I will widen his
horizon so that he will be able to see something beside Scotland and
his little insignificant Fifeshire parish! I told him our country
parishes in America were ten times as large as his. He said he had
heard that they covered a good deal of territory, and that the
ministers' salaries were sometimes paid in pork and potatoes. That
shows you the style of his retorts!"

"I really cannot decide which of you was the more disagreeable," said
Salemina; "if he calls, I shall not remain in the room."

"I wouldn't gratify him by staying out," retorted Francesca. "He is
extremely good for the circulation; I think I was never so warm in my
life as when I talked with him; as physical exercise he is equal to
bicycling. The bridge man is coming to call, too. I gave him a diagram
of Breadalbane Terrace, and a plan of the hall and staircase, on my
dinner-card. He was distinctly ungrateful; in fact, he remarked that
he had been born in this very house, but would not trust himself to
find his way upstairs with my plan as a guide. He also said the
American vocabulary was vastly amusing, so picturesque, unstudied, and
fresh."

"That was nice, surely," I interpolated.

"You know perfectly well that it was an insult."

"Francesca is very like the young man," laughed Salemina, "who,
whenever he engaged in controversy, seemed to take off his flesh and
sit in his nerves."

"I'm not supersensitive," replied Francesca, "but when one's
vocabulary is called picturesque by a Britisher, one always knows he
is thinking of cowboys and broncos. However, I shifted the weight into
the other scale by answering, 'Thank you. And your phraseology is just
as unusual to us.' 'Indeed?' he said with some surprise. 'I supposed
our method of expression very sedate and uneventful.' 'Not at all,' I
returned, 'when you say, as you did a moment ago, that you never eat
potato to your fish.' 'But I do not,' he urged obtusely. 'Very
likely,' I argued, 'but the fact is not of so much importance as the
preposition. Now I eat potato _with_ my fish.' 'You make a mistake,'
he said, and we both laughed in spite of ourselves, while he murmured,
'eating potato _with_ fish,--how extraordinary.' Well, the bridge man
may not add perceptibly to the gayety of the nations, but he is better
than the Reverend Ronald. I forgot to say that when I chanced to be
speaking of doughnuts, that 'unconquer'd Scot' asked me if a doughnut
resembled a peanut! Can you conceive such ignorance?"

"I think you were not only aggressively American, but painfully
provincial," said Salemina, with some warmth. "Why in the world should
you drag doughnuts into a dinner-table conversation in Edinburgh? Why
not select topics of universal interest?"

"Like the Currie Brig or the shade of Montrose," I murmured slyly.

"To one who has ever eaten a doughnut, the subject is of transcendent
interest; and as for one who has not--well, he should be made to feel
his limitations," replied Francesca, with a yawn. "Come, let us forget
our troubles in sleep; it is after midnight."

About half an hour later she came to my bedside, her dark hair hanging
over her white gown, her eyes still bright.

"Penelope," she said softly, "I did not dare tell Salemina, and I
should not confess it to you save that I am afraid Lady Baird will
complain of me; but I was dreadfully rude to the Reverend Ronald! I
couldn't help it; he roused my worst passions. It all began with his
saying he thought international marriages presented even more
difficulties to the imagination than the other kind. _I_ hadn't said
anything about marriages nor thought anything about marriages of any
sort, but I told him _instantly_ I considered that every international
marriage involved two national suicides. He said that he shouldn't
have put it quite so forcibly, but that he hadn't given much thought
to the subject. I said that _I_ had, and I thought we had gone on long
enough filling the coffers of the British nobility with American
gold."

"_Frances!_" I interrupted. "Don't tell me that you made that vulgar,
cheap newspaper assertion!"

"I did," she replied stoutly, "and at the moment I only wished I could
make it stronger. If there had been anything cheaper or more vulgar, I
should have said it, but of course there isn't. Then he remarked that
the British nobility merited and needed all the support it could get
in these hard times, and asked if we had not cherished some intention
in the States, lately, of bestowing it in greenbacks instead of gold!
I threw all manners to the winds after that and told him that there
were no husbands in the world like American men, and that foreigners
never seemed to have any proper consideration for women. Now, were my
remarks any worse than his, after all, and what shall I do about it,
anyway?"

"You should go to bed first," I murmured sleepily; "and if you ever
have an opportunity to make amends, which I doubt, you should devote
yourself to showing the Reverend Ronald the breadth of your own
horizon instead of trying so hard to broaden his. As you are extremely
pretty, you may possibly succeed; man is human, and I dare say in a
month you will be advising him to love somebody more worthy than
yourself. (He could easily do it!) Now don't kiss me again, for I am
displeased with you; I hate international bickering!"

"So do I," agreed Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, "and
there is no spectacle so abhorrent to every sense as a narrow-minded
man who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is
awfully good-looking,--I will say that for him; and if you don't
explain me to Lady Baird, I will write to Mr. Beresford about the
earl. There was no bickering there; it was looking at you two that
made us think of international marriages."

"It must have suggested to you that speech about filling the coffers
of the British nobility," I replied sarcastically, "inasmuch as the
earl has twenty thousand pounds a year, probably, and I could barely
buy two gold hairpins to pin on the coronet. There, do go away and
leave me in peace!"

"Good-night again, then," she said, as she rose reluctantly from the
foot of the bed. "I doubt if I can sleep for thinking what a pity it
is that such an egotistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular,
bigoted person should be so handsome! And who wants to marry him,
anyway, that he should be so distressed about international alliances?
One would think that all female America was sighing to lead him to the
altar!"




VIII


Two or three days ago we noted an unusual though subdued air of
excitement at 22, Breadalbane Terrace, where for a week we had been
the sole lodgers. Mrs. Menzies, whom we call Mingess, has returned to
Kilconquhar, which she calls Kinyukkar; Miss Cockburn-Sinclair has
purchased her wedding outfit and gone back to Inverness, where she
will be greeted as Coburn-Sinkler; the Hepburn-Sciennes will be
leaving to-morrow, just as we have learned to pronounce their names;
and the sound of the scrubbing-brush is heard in the land. In corners
where all was clean and spotless before, Mrs. M'Collop is digging with
the broom, and the maiden Boots is following her with a damp cloth.
The stair carpets are hanging on lines in the back garden, and
Susanna, with her cap rakishly on one side, is always to be seen
polishing the stair rods. Whenever we traverse the halls we are
obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given
us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washing-day repasts
in suburban America.

"Is it spring house-cleaning?" I ask Mistress M'Collop.

"Na, na," she replies hurriedly; "it's the meenisters."

On the 19th of May we are a maiden castle no longer. Black coats and
hats ring at the bell, and pass in and out of the different
apartments. The hall table is sprinkled with letters, visiting-cards,
and programmes which seem to have had the alphabet shaken out upon
them, for they bear the names of professors, doctors, reverends, and
very reverends, and fairly bristle with A. M.'s, M. A.'s, A. B.'s, D.
D.'s, and LL. D.'s. The voice of family prayer is lifted up from the
dining-room floor, and Paraphrases and hymns float down the stairs
from above. Their Graces the Lord High Commissioner and the
Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive to-day at Holyrood Palace,
there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland, and to-morrow the Royal Standard will be hoisted
at Edinburgh Castle from reveille to retreat. His Grace will hold a
levee at eleven. Directly His Grace leaves the palace after the levee,
the guard of honor will proceed by the Canongate to receive him on his
arrival at St. Giles' Church, and will then proceed to Assembly Hall
to receive him on his arrival there. The Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons
and the First Battalion Royal Scots will be in attendance, and there
will be unicorns, carricks, pursuivants, heralds, mace-bearers,
ushers, and pages, together with the Purse-bearer, and the Lyon
King-of-Arms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute; for the
palace has awakened and is "mimicking its past."

"_Should the weather be wet the troops will be cloaked at the
discretion of the commanding officers._" They print this instruction
as a matter of form, and of course every man has his mackintosh ready.
The only hope lies in the fact that this is a national function, and
"Queen's weather" is a possibility. The one personage for whom the
Scottish climate will occasionally relax is Her Majesty Queen
Victoria, who for sixty years has exerted a benign influence on
British skies and at least secured sunshine on great parade days. Such
women are all too few!

In this wise enters His Grace the Lord High Commissioner to open the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and on the same day there
arrives by the railway (but traveling first class) the Moderator of
the Church of Scotland, Free, to convene its separate Supreme Courts
in Edinburgh. He will have no Union Jacks, Royal Standards, Dragoons,
bands, or pipers; he will bear his own purse and stay at a hotel; but
when the final procession of all comes, he will probably march beside
His Grace the Lord High Commissioner, and they will talk together, not
of dead-and-gone kingdoms, but of the one at hand, where there are no
more divisions in the ranks, and where all the soldiers are simply
"king's men," marching to victory under the inspiration of a common
watchword.

It is a matter of regret to us that the U. P.'s, the third branch of
Scottish Presbyterianism, could not be holding an Assembly during this
same week, so that we might the more easily decide in which flock we
really belong. 22, Breadalbane Terrace now represents all shades of
religious opinion within the bounds of Presbyterianism. We have an
Elder, a Professor of Biblical Criticism, a Majesty's Chaplain, and
even an ex-Moderator under our roof, and they are equally divided
between the Free and the Established bodies.

Mrs. M'Collop herself is a pillar of the Free Kirk, but she has no
prejudice in lodgers, and says so long as she "mak's her rent she
doesna care aboot their releegious principles." Miss Diggity-Dalgety
is the sole representative of United Presbyterianism in the household,
and she is somewhat gloomy in Assembly time. To belong to a dissenting
body, and yet to cook early and late for the purpose of fattening
one's religious rivals, is doubtless trying to the temper; and then
she asserts that "meenisters are aye tume [empty]."

                  *       *       *       *       *

"You must put away your Scottish ballads and histories now, Salemina,
and keep your Concordance and your umbrella constantly at hand."

This I said as we stood on George IV. Bridge and saw the ministers
glooming down from the Mound in a dense Assembly fog. As the presence
of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed
to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to
the population of Edinburgh is believed to induce rain,--or perhaps I
should say, more rain.

Of course, when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily
resist the infection of disease. Similarly if Scottish skies were not
ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding
it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences
of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as stated to the
Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head
at the time; and she went on to boast of a convention she once
attended in San Francisco, where twenty-six thousand Christian
Endeavorers were unable to dim the California sunshine, though they
stayed ten days.

"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued
to Salemina, "is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of
proper Presbyterianism. Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part
if we should each espouse a different kind; then there would be no
feeling among our Edinburgh friends. And again, what is this 'union'
of which we hear murmurs? Is it religious or political? Is it an echo
of the 1707 Union you explained to us last week, or is it a new one?
What is Disestablishment? What is Disruption? Are they the same thing?
What is the Sustentation Fund? What was the Non-Intrusion Party? What
was the Dundas Despotism? What is the argument at present going on
about taking the Shorter Catechism out of the schools? What is the
Shorter Catechism, anyway,--or at least, what have they left out of
the Longer Catechism to make it shorter,--and is the length of the
Catechism one of the points of difference? Then when we have looked up
Chalmers and Candlish, we can ask the ex-Moderator and the Professor
of Biblical Criticism to tea; separately, of course, lest there should
be ecclesiastical quarrels."

Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established Church, I lean
instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have any
knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a
conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic
associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly
established national church,--or, for that matter, a regularly
established anything,--she gravitates to it by the law of her being.
Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own
minister and native land, are inclined to be flexible. The church that
enters Edinburgh with a marquis and a marchioness representing the
Crown, the church that opens its Assembly with splendid processions
and dignified pageants, the church that dispenses generous hospitality
from Holyrood Palace,--above all, the church that escorts its Lord
High Commissioner from place to place with bands and pipers,--that is
the church to which she pledges her constant presence and enthusiastic
support.

As for me, I believe I am a born protestant, or "come-outer," as they
used to call dissenters in the early days of New England. I have not
yet had time to study the question, but as I lack all knowledge of the
other two branches of Presbyterianism, I am enabled to say
unhesitatingly that I belong to the Free Kirk. To begin with, the very
word "free" has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then
my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young
minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time
we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness
beneath the chin, that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual
face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church
in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky
whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from the
stained-glass window above the pulpit looked reddish gold; the
Southern heat of passionate conviction that colored his slow Northern
speech; the remoteness of his personality; the weariness of his
deep-set eyes, that bespoke such fastings and vigils as he probably
never practiced,--all this led to our choice of the name.

As we walked toward St. Andrew's Church and Tanfield Hall, where he
insisted on taking me to get the "proper historical background," he
told me about the great Disruption movement. He was extremely
eloquent,--so eloquent that the image of Willie Beresford tottered
continually on its throne, and I found not the slightest difficulty in
giving an unswerving allegiance to the principles presented by such an
orator.

We went first to St. Andrew's, where the General Assembly met in 1843,
and where the famous exodus of the Free Protesting Church took
place,--one of the most important events in the modern history of the
United Kingdom.

The movement was promoted by the great Dr. Chalmers and his party,
mainly to abolish the patronage of livings, then in the hands of
certain heritors or patrons, who might appoint any minister they
wished, without consulting the congregation. Needless to say, as a
free-born American citizen, and never having had a heritor in the
family, my blood easily boiled at the recital of such tyranny. In 1834
the Church had passed a law of its own, it seems, ordaining that no
presentee to a parish should be admitted, if opposed by the majority
of the male communicants. That would have been well enough could the
State have been made to agree, though I should have gone further,
personally, and allowed the female communicants to have some voice in
the matter.

The Friar took me into a particularly chilly historic corner, and,
leaning against a damp stone pillar, painted the scene in St. Andrew's
when the Assembly met in the presence of a great body of spectators,
while a vast throng gathered without, breathlessly awaiting the
result. No one believed that any large number of ministers would
relinquish livings and stipends and cast their bread upon the waters
for what many thought a "fantastic principle." Yet when the Moderator
left his place, after reading a formal protest signed by one hundred
and twenty ministers and seventy-two elders, he was followed first by
Dr. Chalmers, and then by four hundred and seventy men, who marched in
a body to Tanfield Hall, where they formed themselves into the General
Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of
it an hour later, he exclaimed, "Thank God for Scotland! There is not
another country on earth where such a deed could be done!" And the
Friar reminded me proudly of Macaulay's saying that the Scots had made
sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion for which there was no
parallel in the annals of England. On the next Sunday after these
remarkable scenes in Edinburgh there were heart-breaking farewells, so
the Friar said, in many village parishes, when the minister, in
dismissing his congregation, told them that he had ceased to belong to
the Established Church and would neither preach nor pray in that
pulpit again; that he had joined the Free Protesting Church of
Scotland, and, God willing, would speak the next Sabbath morning at
the manse door to as many as cared to follow him. "What affecting
leave-takings there must have been!" the Friar exclaimed. "When my
grandfather left his church that May morning, only fifteen members
remained behind, and he could hear the more courageous say to the
timid ones, 'Tak' your Bible an' come awa' mon!' Was not all this a
splendid testimony to the power of principle and the sacred demands of
conscience?" I said "Yea" most heartily, for the spirit of Jenny
Geddes stirred within me that morning, and under the spell of the
Friar's kindling eye and eloquent voice I positively gloried in the
valiant achievements of the Free Church. It would always be easier for
a woman to say "Yea" than "Nay" to the Friar. When he left me in
Breadalbane Terrace I was at heart a member of his congregation in
good (and irregular) standing, ready to teach in his Sunday-school,
sing in his choir, visit his aged and sick poor, and especially to
stand between him and a too admiring feminine constituency.

When I entered the drawing-room, I found that Salemina had just
enjoyed an hour's conversation with the ex-Moderator of the opposite
church wing.

"Oh, my dear," she sighed, "you have missed such a treat! You have no
conception of these Scottish ministers of the Establishment,--such
culture, such courtliness of manner, such scholarship, such
spirituality, such wise benignity of opinion! I asked the doctor
to explain the Disruption movement to me, and he was most interesting
and lucid, and most affecting, too, when he described the
misunderstandings and misconceptions that the Church suffered in those
terrible days of 1843, when its very life-blood, as well as its
integrity and unity, was threatened by the foes in its own
household; when breaches of faith and trust occurred on all sides,
and dissents and disloyalties shook it to its very foundation! You
see, Penelope, I have never fully understood the disagreements
about heritors and livings and state control before, but here is the
whole matter in a nut-sh--"

"My dear Salemina," I interposed, with dignity, "you will pardon me, I
am sure, when I tell you that any discussion on this point would be
intensely painful to me, as I now belong to the Free Kirk."

"Where have you been this morning?" she asked, with a piercing
glance.

"To St. Andrew's and Tanfield Hall."

"With whom?"

"With the Friar."

"I see! Happy the missionary to whom you incline your ear,
_first_!"--which I thought rather inconsistent of Salemina, as she had
been converted by precisely the same methods and in precisely the same
length of time as had I, the only difference being in the ages of our
respective missionaries, one being about five and thirty, the other
five and sixty. Even this is to my credit after all, for if one can be
persuaded so quickly and fully by a young and comparatively
inexperienced man, it shows that one must be extremely susceptible to
spiritual influences or--something.




IX


Religion in Edinburgh is a theory, a convention, a fashion (both
humble and aristocratic), a sensation, an intellectual conviction, an
emotion, a dissipation, a sweet habit of the blood; in fact, it is, it
seems to me, every sort of thing it can be to the human spirit.

When we had finished our church toilettes, and came into the
drawing-room, on the first Sunday morning, I remember that we found
Francesca at the window.

"There is a battle, murder, or sudden death going on in the square
below," she said. "I am going to ask Susanna to ask Mrs. M'Collop what
it means. Never have I seen such a crowd moving peacefully, with no
excitement or confusion, in one direction. Where can the people be
going? Do you suppose it is a fire? Why, I believe ... it cannot be
possible ... yes, they certainly are disappearing in that big church
on the corner; and millions, simply millions and trillions, are coming
in the other direction,--toward St. Knox's."

Impressive as was this morning church-going, a still greater surprise
awaited us at seven o'clock in the evening, when the crowd blocked the
streets on two sides of a church near Breadalbane Terrace; and though
it was quite ten minutes before service when we entered, Salemina and
I only secured the last two seats in the aisle, and Francesca was
obliged to sit on the steps of the pulpit or seek a sermon elsewhere.

It amused me greatly to see Francesca sitting on pulpit steps, her
Paris gown and smart toque in close juxtaposition to the rusty bonnet
and bombazine dress of a respectable elderly tradeswoman. The church
officer entered first, bearing the great Bible and hymn-book, which he
reverently placed on the pulpit cushions; and close behind him, to our
entire astonishment, came the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, evidently
exchanging with the regular minister of the parish, whom we had come
especially to hear. I pitied Francesca's confusion and embarrassment,
but I was too far from her to offer an exchange of seats, and through
the long service she sat there at the feet of her foe, so near that
she could have touched the hem of his gown as he knelt devoutly for
his first silent prayer.

Perhaps she was thinking of her last interview with him, when she
descanted at length on that superfluity of naughtiness and Biblical
pedantry which, she asserted, made Scottish ministers preach from
out-of-the-way texts.

"I've never been able to find my place in the Bible since I arrived,"
she complained to Salemina, when she was quite sure that Mr. Macdonald
was listening to her; and this he generally was, in my opinion, no
matter who chanced to be talking. "What with their skipping and
hopping about from Haggai to Philemon, Habakkuk to Jude, and Micah to
Titus, in their readings, and then settling on seventh Nahum, sixth
Zephaniah or second Calathumpians for the sermon, I do nothing but
search the Scriptures in the Edinburgh churches,--search, search,
search, until some Christian by my side or in the pew behind me
notices my hapless plight, and hands me a Bible opened at the text.
Last Sunday it was Obadiah first, fifteenth, 'For the day of the Lord
is near upon all the heathen.' It chanced to be a returned missionary
who was preaching on that occasion; but the Bible is full of heathen,
and why need he have chosen a text from Obadiah, poor little Obadiah
one page long, slipped in between Amos and Jonah, where nobody but an
elder could find him?" If Francesca had not seen with wicked delight
the Reverend Ronald's expression of anxiety, she would never have
spoken of second Calathumpians; but of course he has no means of
knowing how unlike herself she is when in his company.

To go back to our first Sunday worship in Edinburgh. The church
officer closed the door of the pulpit on the Reverend Ronald, and I
thought I heard the clicking of a lock; at all events, he returned at
the close of the services to liberate him and escort him back to the
vestry; for the entrances and exits of this beadle, or "minister's
man," as the church officer is called in the country districts, form
an impressive part of the ceremonies. If he did lock the minister into
the pulpit, it is probably only another national custom, like the
occasional locking in of the passengers in a railway train, and may be
positively necessary in the case of such magnetic and popular
preachers as Mr. Macdonald or the Friar.

I have never seen such attention, such concentration, as in these
great congregations of the Edinburgh churches. As nearly as I can
judge, it is intellectual rather than emotional; but it is not a
tribute paid to eloquence alone, it is habitual and universal, and is
yielded loyally to insufferable dullness when occasion demands.

When the text is announced, there is an indescribable rhythmic
movement forward, followed by a concerted rustle of Bible leaves; not
the rustle of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle of all
of them in all the pews,--and there are more Bibles in an Edinburgh
Presbyterian church than one ever sees anywhere else, unless it be in
the warehouses of the Bible Societies.

The text is read twice clearly, and another rhythmic movement follows
when the books are replaced on the shelves. Then there is a delightful
settling back of the entire congregation, a snuggling comfortably into
corners and a fitting of shoulders to the pews,--not to sleep,
however; an older generation may have done that under the strain of a
two-hour "wearifu' dreich" sermon, but these church-goers are not to
be caught napping. They wear, on the contrary, a keen, expectant,
critical look, which must be inexpressibly encouraging to the
minister, if he has anything to say. If he has not (and this is a
possibility in Edinburgh, as it is everywhere else), then I am sure it
is wisdom for the beadle to lock him in, lest he flee when he meets
those searching eyes.

The Edinburgh sermon, though doubtless softened in outline in these
later years, is still a more carefully built discourse than one
ordinarily hears out of Scotland, being constructed on conventional
lines of doctrine, exposition, logical inference, and practical
application. Though modern preachers do not announce the division of
their subject into heads and sub-heads, firstlies and secondlies and
finallies my brethren, there seems to be the old framework underneath
the sermon, and everyone recognizes it as moving silently below the
surface; at least, I always fancy that as the minister finishes one
point and attacks another the younger folk fix their eagle eyes on him
afresh, and the whole congregation sits up straighter and listens more
intently, as if making mental notes. They do not listen so much as if
they were enthralled, though they often are and have good reason to
be, but as if they were to pass an examination on the subject
afterwards; and I have no doubt that this is the fact.

The prayers are many, and are divided, apparently, like those of the
liturgies, into petitions, confessions, and aspirations; not
forgetting the all-embracing one with which we are perfectly familiar
in our native land, in which the preacher commends to the Fatherly
care every animate and inanimate thing not mentioned specifically in
the foregoing supplications. It was in the middle of this compendious
petition, "the lang prayer," that rheumatic old Scottish dames used to
make a practice of "cheengin' the fit," as they stood devoutly through
it. "When the meenister comes to the 'ingetherin' o' the Gentiles,' I
ken weel it's time to cheenge legs, for then the prayer is jist half
dune," said a good sermon-taster of Fife.

The organ is finding its way rapidly into the Scottish kirks (how can
the shade of John Knox endure a "kist o' whistles" in good St.
Giles'?), but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most
frequently. There is a certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful
austerity, in the unaccompanied singing of hymns that touches me
profoundly. I am often carried very high on the waves of splendid
church music, when the organ's thunder rolls "through vaulted aisles"
and the angelic voices of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my
soul for me; but when an Edinburgh congregation stands, and the
precentor leads in that noble Paraphrase,

    "God of our fathers, be the God
    Of their succeeding race,"

there is a certain ascetic fervor in it that seems to me the
perfection of worship. It may be that my Puritan ancestors are mainly
responsible for this feeling, or perhaps my recently adopted Jenny
Geddes is a factor in it; of course, if she were in the habit of
flinging fauldstules at Deans, she was probably the friend of truth
and the foe of beauty, so far as it was in her power to separate
them.

There is no music during the offertory in these churches, and this,
too, pleases my sense of the fitness of things. It cannot soften the
woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and
the cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit,
quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle
of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies
and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am
told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate
the amount of the collection before it is counted. There is often a
huge pewter plate just within the church door, in which the offerings
are placed as the worshipers enter or leave; and one always notes the
preponderance of silver at the morning, and of copper at the evening
services. It is perhaps needless to say that before Francesca had been
in Edinburgh a fortnight she asked Mr. Macdonald if it were true that
the Scots continued coining the farthing for years and years, merely
to have a piece of money serviceable for church offerings!

As to social differences in the congregations we are somewhat at sea.
We tried to arrive at a conclusion by the hats and bonnets, than which
there is usually no more infallible test. On our first Sunday we
attended the Free Kirk in the morning, and the Established in the
evening. The bonnets of the Free Kirk were so much the more elegant
that we said to one another, "This is evidently the church of society,
though the adjective 'Free' should by rights attract the masses." On
the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the
Established bonnet much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a
source of mystification to us, until we discovered that it was a
question of morning or evening service, not of the form of
Presbyterianism. We think, on the whole, that, taking town and country
congregations together, millinery has not flourished under
Presbyterianism,--it seems to thrive better in the Romish atmosphere
of France; but the Disruption, at least, has had nothing to answer for
in the matter, as it appears simply to have parted the bonnets of
Scotland in twain, as Moses divided the Red Sea, and left good and
evil on both sides.

I can never forget our first military service at St. Giles'. We left
Breadalbane Terrace before nine in the morning and walked along the
beautiful curve of street that sweeps around the base of Castle
Rock,--walked on through the poverty and squalor of the High Street,
keeping in view the beautiful lantern tower as a guiding star, till we
heard

    "The murmur of the city crowd;
    And, from his steeple, jingling loud,
    St. Giles's mingling din."

We joined the throng outside the venerable church, and awaited the
approach of the soldiers from the Castle parade-ground; for it is from
there they march in detachments to the church of their choice. A
religion they must have, and if, when called up and questioned about
it, they have forgotten to provide themselves, or have no preference
as to form of worship, they are assigned to one by the person in
authority. When the regiments are assembled on the parade-ground of a
Sunday morning, the first command is, "Church of Scotland, right about
face, quick march!"--the bodies of men belonging to other
denominations standing fast until their turn comes to move. It is said
that a new officer once gave the command, "Church of Scotland, right
about face, quick march! Fancy releegions, stay where ye are!"

Just as we were being told this story by an attendant squire, there
was a burst of scarlet and a blare of music, and down Castle Hill and
the Lawnmarket into Parliament Square marched hundreds of redcoats,
the Highland pipers (otherwise the Olympian gods) swinging in front,
leaving the American female heart prostrate beneath their victorious
tread. The strains of music that in the distance sounded so martial
and triumphant we recognized in a moment as "Abide with me," and never
did the fine old tune seem more majestic than when it marked a measure
for the steady tramp, tramp, tramp, of those soldierly feet. As "The
March of the Cameron Men," piped from the green steeps of Castle Hill,
had aroused in us thoughts of splendid victories on the battlefield,
so did this simple hymn awake the spirit of the church militant; a no
less stern, but more spiritual soldiership, in which "the fruit of
righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace."

As I fell asleep on that first Sunday night in Edinburgh, after the
somewhat unusual experience of three church services in a single day,
three separate notes of memory floated in and out of the fabric of my
dreams: the sound of the soldiers' feet marching into old St. Giles'
to the strains of "Abide with me;" the voice of the Reverend Ronald
ringing out with manly insistence: "It is aspiration that counts, not
realization; pursuit, not achievement; quest, not conquest!"--and the
closing phrases of the Friar's prayer: "When Christ has forgiven us,
help us to forgive ourselves! Help us to forgive ourselves so fully
that we can even forget ourselves, remembering only Him! And so let
his kingdom come; we ask it for the King's sake, Amen."




X


Even at this time of Assemblies, when the atmosphere is almost
exclusively clerical and ecclesiastical, the two great church armies
represented here certainly conceal from the casual observer all
rivalries and jealousies, if indeed they cherish any. As for the two
dissenting bodies, the Church of the Disruption and the Church of the
Secession have been keeping company, so to speak, for some years, with
a distant eye to an eventual union. In the light of all this pleasant
toleration, it seems difficult to realize that earlier Edinburgh,
where, we learned from old parochial records of 1605, Margaret
Sinclair was cited by the Session of the Kirk for being at the Burne
for water on the Sabbath; that Janet Merling was ordered to make
public repentance for concealing a bairn unbaptized in her house for
the space of twenty weeks and calling said bairn Janet; that Pat
Richardson had to crave mercy for being found in his boat in time of
afternoon service; and that Janet Walker, accused of having visitors
in her house in sermon-time, had to confess her offense and on her
knees crave mercy of God _and_ the Kirk Session (which no doubt was
much worse) under penalty of a hundred pounds Scots. Possibly there
are people yet who would prefer to pay a hundred pounds rather than
hear a sermon, but they are few.

It was in the early seventeen hundred and thirties when Allan Ramsay,
"in fear and trembling of legal and clerical censure," lent out the
plays of Congreve and Farquhar from his famous High Street library. In
1756 it was that the Presbytery of Edinburgh suspended all clergymen
who had witnessed the representation of "Douglas," that virtuous
tragedy written, to the dismay of all Scotland, by a minister of the
Kirk. That the world, even the theological world, moves with tolerable
rapidity when once set in motion, is evinced by the fact that on Mrs.
Siddons' second engagement in Edinburgh, in the summer of 1785, vast
crowds gathered about the doors of the theatre, not at night alone,
but in the day, to secure places. It became necessary to admit them
first at three in the afternoon, and then at noon, and eventually "the
General Assembly of the Church then in session was compelled to
arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great
actress." How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after
one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion, "That's no bad!"
We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but
her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies
fainted by dozens during her impersonation of Isabella in "The Fatal
Marriage."

Since Scottish hospitality is well-nigh inexhaustible, it is not
strange that from the moment Edinburgh streets began to be crowded
with ministers, our drawing-room table began to bear shoals of
engraved invitations of every conceivable sort, all equally unfamiliar
to our American eyes.

"The Purse-Bearer is commanded by the Lord High Commissioner and the
Marchioness of Heatherdale to invite Miss Hamilton to a Garden Party
at the Palace of Holyrood House, on the 27th of May. _Weather
permitting_."

"The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland admits Miss
Hamilton to any gallery on any day."

"The Marchioness of Heatherdale is At Home on the 26th of May from a
quarter past nine in the evening. Palace of Holyrood House."

"The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland
is At Home in the Library of the New College on Saturday, the 22d May,
from eight to ten in the evening."

"The Moderator asks the pleasure of Miss Hamilton's presence at a
Breakfast to be given on the morning of the 25th of May at Dunedin
Hotel."

We determined to go to all these functions impartially, tracking thus
the Presbyterian lion to his very lair, and observing his home as well
as his company manners. In everything that related to the
distinctively religious side of the proceedings we sought advice from
Mrs. M'Collop, while we went to Lady Baird for definite information on
secular matters. We also found an unexpected ally in the person of our
own ex-Moderator's niece, Miss Jean Dalziel (Deeyell). She has been
educated in Paris, but she must always have been a delightfully breezy
person, quite too irrepressible to be affected by Scottish _haar_ or
theology. "Go to the Assemblies, by all means," she said, "and be sure
and get places for the heresy case. These are no longer what they once
were,--we are getting lamentably weak and gelatinous in our
beliefs,--but there is an unusually nice one this year; the heretic is
very young and handsome, and quite wicked, as ministers go. Don't fail
to be presented at the Marchioness's court at Holyrood, for it is a
capital preparation for the ordeal of Her Majesty and Buckingham
Palace. 'Nothing fit to wear'? You have never seen the people who go,
or you wouldn't say that! I even advise you to attend one of the
breakfasts; it can't do you any serious or permanent injury so long as
you eat something before you go. Oh no, it doesn't matter,--whichever
one you choose, you will cheerfully omit the other; for I avow as a
Scottish spinster, and the niece of an ex-Moderator, that to a
stranger and a foreigner the breakfasts are worse than Arctic
explorations. If you do not chance to be at the table of honor"--

"The gifted Miss Hamilton is always at the table of honor; unless she
is placed there she refuses to eat, and then the universe rocks to its
centre," interpolated Francesca impertinently.

"It is true," continued Miss Dalziel, "you will often sit beside a
minister or a minister's wife, who will make you scorn the sordid
appetites of flesh, but if you do not, then eat as little as may be,
and flee up the Mound to whichever Assembly is the Mecca of your
soul!"

"My niece's tongue is an unruly member," said the ex-Moderator, who
was present at this diatribe, "and the principal mistake she makes in
her judgment of these clerical feasts is that she criticises them as
conventional repasts, whereas they are intended to be informal
meetings together of people who wish to be better acquainted."

"Hot bacon and eggs would be no bar to friendship," answered Miss
Dalziel, with an affectionate _moue_.

"Cold bacon and eggs is better than cold piety," said the
ex-Moderator, "and it may be a good discipline for fastidious young
ladies who have been spoiled by Parisian breakfasts."

It is to Mrs. M'Collop that we owe our chief insight into technical
church matters, although we seldom agree with her "opeenions" after we
gain our own experience. She never misses hearing one sermon on a
Sabbath, and oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does she
confine herself to the ministrations of a single preacher, but roves
from one sanctuary to another, seeking the bread of life, often,
however, according to her own account, getting a particularly
indigestible "stane."

She is thus a complete guide to the Edinburgh pulpit, and when she is
making a bed in the morning she dispenses criticism in so large and
impartial a manner that it would make the flesh of the "meenistry"
creep were it overheard. I used to think Ian Maclaren's sermon-taster
a possible exaggeration of an existent type, but I now see that she is
truth itself.

"Ye'll be tryin' anither kirk the morn?" suggests Mrs. M'Collop,
spreading the clean Sunday sheet over the mattress. "Wha did ye hear
the Sawbath that's bye? Dr. A? Ay, I ken him ower weel; he's been
there for fifteen years an' mair. Ay, he's a gifted mon--_off an'
on_!" with an emphasis showing clearly that, in her estimation, the
times when he is "off" outnumber those when he is "on."... "Ye have na
heard auld Dr. B yet?" (Here she tucks in the upper sheet tidily at
the foot.) "He's a graund strachtforrit mon, is Dr. B, forbye he's
growin' maist awfu' dreich in his sermons, though when he's that
wearisome a body canna heed him wi' oot takin' peppermints to the
kirk, he's nane the less, at seeventy-sax, a better mon than the new
asseestant. Div ye ken the new asseestant? He's a wee-bit, finger-fed
mannie, ower sma' maist to wear a goon! I canna thole him, wi' his
lang-nebbit words, explainin' an' expoundin' the gude Book as if it
had jist come oot! The auld doctor's nae kirk-filler, but he gies us
fu' meesure, pressed doun an' rinnin' over, nae bit-pickin's like the
haverin' asseestant; it's my opeenion he's no soond, wi' his
parleyvoos an' his clish-maclavers!... Mr. C?" (Now comes the shaking
and straightening and smoothing of the first blanket.) "Ay, he's weel
eneuch! I mind ance he prayed for our Free Assembly, an' then he
turned roun' an' prayed for the Estaiblished, maist in the same
breath,--he's a broad, leeberal mon is Mr. C!... Mr. D? Ay, I ken him
fine; he micht be waur, though he's ower fond o' the kittle pairts o'
the Old Testament; but he reads his sermon from the paper, an' it's an
auld sayin', 'If a meenister canna mind [remember] his ain discoorse,
nae mair can the congregation be expectit to mind it.'... Mr. E? He's
my ain meenister." (She has a pillow in her mouth now, but though she
is shaking it as a terrier would a rat, and drawing on the linen slip
at the same time, she is still intelligible between the jerks.)
"Susanna says his sermon is like claith made o' soond 'oo [wool] wi' a
gude twined thread, an' wairpit an' weftit wi' doctrine. Susanna kens
her Bible weel, but she's never gaed forrit." (To "gang forrit" is to
take the communion.) "Dr. F? I ca' him the greetin' doctor! He's aye
dingin' the dust oot o' the poopit cushions, an' greetin' ower the
sins o' the human race, an' eespecially of his ain congregation. He's
waur syne his last wife sickened an' slippit awa.' 'Twas a chastenin'
he'd put up wi' twice afore, but he grat nane the less. She was a
bonnie bit body, was the thurd Mistress F! E'nbro could 'a' better
spared the greetin' doctor than her, I'm thinkin'."

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, according to his good will
and pleasure," I ventured piously, as Mrs. M'Collop beat the bolster
and laid it in place.

"Ou ay," responded that good woman, as she spread the counterpane over
the pillows in the way I particularly dislike--"ou ay, but whiles I
think it's a peety he couldna be guidit!"




XI


We were to make our bow to the Lord High Commissioner and the
Marchioness of Heatherdale in the evening, and we were in a state of
republican excitement at 22, Breadalbane Terrace.

Francesca had surprised us by refusing to be presented at this
semi-royal Scottish court. "Not I," she said. "The Marchioness
represents the Queen; we may discover, when we arrive, that she has
raised the standards of admission, and requires us to 'back out' of
the throne-room. I don't propose to do that without London training.
Besides, I detest crowds, and I never go to my own President's
receptions; and I have a headache, anyway, and I don't feel like
coping with the Reverend Ronald to-night!" (Lady Baird was to take us
under her wing, and her nephew was to escort us, Sir Robert being in
Inveraray.)

"Sally, my dear," I said, as Francesca left the room with a bottle of
smelling-salts somewhat ostentatiously in evidence, "methinks the
damsel doth protest too much. In other words, she devotes a good deal
of time and discussion to a gentleman whom she heartily dislikes. As
she is under your care, I will direct your attention to the following
points:--

"Ronald Macdonald is a Scotsman; Francesca disapproves of
international alliances.

"He is a Presbyterian; she is a Swedenborgian.

"His father was a famous old school doctor; Francesca is a
homoeopathist.

"He is serious; Francesca is gay.

"I think, under all the circumstances, their acquaintance will bear
watching. Two persons so utterly dissimilar, and, so far as
superficial observation goes, so entirely unsuited to each other, are
quite likely to drift into marriage unless diverted by watchful
philanthropists."

"Nonsense!" returned Salemina brusquely. "You think because you are
under the spell of the tender passion yourself that other people are
in constant danger. Francesca detests him."

"Who told you so?"

"She herself," triumphantly.

"Salemina," I said pityingly, "I have always believed you a spinster
from choice; don't lead me to think that you have never had any
experience in these matters! The Reverend Ronald has also intimated to
me as plainly as he dared that he cannot bear the sight of Francesca.
What do I gather from this statement? The general conclusion that if
it be true, it is curious that he looks at her incessantly."

"Francesca would never live in Scotland," remarked Salemina feebly.

"Not unless she were asked, of course," I replied.

"He would never ask her."

"Not unless he thought he had a chance of an affirmative answer."

"Her father would never allow it."

"Her father allows what she permits him to allow. You know that
perfectly well."

"What shall I do about it, then?"

"Consult me."

"What shall _we_ do about it?"

"Let Nature have her own way."

"I don't believe in Nature."

"Don't be profane, Salemina, and don't be unromantic, which is worse;
but if you insist, trust in Providence."

"I would rather trust Francesca's hard heart."

"The hardest hearts melt if sufficient heat be applied. Did I take you
to Newhaven and read you 'Christie Johnstone' on the beach for naught?
Don't you remember Charles Reade said that the Scotch are icebergs,
with volcanoes underneath; thaw the Scotch ice, which is very cold,
and you shall get to the Scotch fire, warmer than any sun of Italy or
Spain. I think Mr. Macdonald is a volcano."

"I wish he were extinct," said Salemina petulantly, "and I wish you
wouldn't make me nervous."

"If you had any faculty of premonition, you wouldn't have waited for
me to make you nervous."

"Some people are singularly omniscient."

"Others are singularly deficient"--And at this moment Susanna Crum
came in to announce Miss Jean Dalziel, who had come to see sights with
us.

It was our almost daily practice to walk through the Old Town, and we
were now familiar with every street and close in that densely crowded
quarter. Our quest for the sites of ancient landmarks never grew
monotonous, and we were always reconstructing, in imagination, the
Cowgate, the Canongate, the Lawnmarket, and the High Street, until we
could see Auld Reekie as it was in bygone centuries. In those days of
continual war with England, people crowded their dwellings as near the
Castle as possible, so floor was piled upon floor and flat upon flat,
families ensconcing themselves above other families, the tendency
being ever skyward. Those who dwelt on top had no desire to spend
their strength in carrying down the corkscrew stairs matter which
would descend by the force of gravity if pitched from the window or
door; so the wayfarer, especially after dusk, would be greeted with
cries of "Get out o' the gait!" or "Gardy loo!" which was in the
French "_Gardez l'eau_," and which would have been understood in any
language, I fancy, after a little experience. The streets then were
filled with the debris flung from a hundred upper windows, while
certain ground-floor tenants, such as butchers and candlemakers,
contributed their full share to the fragrant heaps. As for these too
seldom used narrow turnpike stairs, imagine the dames of fashion
tilting their vast hoops and silken show-petticoats up and down in
them!

That swine roamed at will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed,
since we have this amusing picture of three High Street belles and
beauties in the "Traditions of Edinburgh:"--

"So easy were the manners of the great, fabled to be so stiff and
decorous," says the author, "that Lady Maxwell's daughter Jane, who
afterward became the Duchess of Gordon, was seen riding a sow up the
High Street, while her sister Eglantine (afterwards Lady Wallace of
Craigie) thumped lustily behind with a stick."

No wonder, in view of all this, that King James VI., when about to
bring home his "darrest spous" Anne of Denmark, wrote to the Provost,
"For God's sake see a' things are richt at our hame-coming; a king
with a new-married wife doesna come hame ilka day."

Had it not been for these royal home-comings and visits of
distinguished foreigners, now and again aided by something still more
salutary, an occasional outbreak of the plague, the easy-going
authorities would never have issued any "cleansing edicts," and the
still easier-going inhabitants would never have obeyed them. It was
these dark, tortuous wynds and closes, nevertheless, that made up the
Court End of Old Edinbro'; for some one writes in 1530, "Via vaccarum
in quâ habitant patricii et senatores urbis" (The nobility and chief
senators of the city dwell in the Cowgate). And as for the Canongate,
this Saxon _gaet_ or way of the Holyrood canons, it still sheltered in
1753 "two dukes, sixteen earls, two dowager countesses, seven lords,
seven lords of session, thirteen baronets, four commanders of the
forces in Scotland, and five eminent men,"--fine game indeed for Mally
Lee!

    "A' doun alang the Canongate
      Were beaux o' ilk degree;
    And mony ane turned round to look
      At bonny Mally Lee.
    And we're a' gaun east an' west,
      We're a' gaun agee,
    We're a' gaun east an' west
      Courtin' Mally Lee!"

Every corner bristles with memories. Here is the Stamp Office Close,
from which the lovely Susanna, Countess of Eglinton, was wont to issue
on Assembly nights; she, six feet in height, with a brilliantly fair
complexion and a "face of the maist bewitching loveliness." Her seven
daughters and stepdaughters were all conspicuously handsome, and it
was deemed a goodly sight to watch the long procession of eight gilded
sedan-chairs pass from the Stamp Office Close, bearing her and her
stately brood to the Assembly Room, amid a crowd that was "hushed with
respect and admiration to behold their lofty and graceful figures step
from the chairs on the pavement."

Here itself is the site of those old Assemblies presided over at one
time by the famous Miss Nicky Murray, a directress of society affairs,
who seems to have been a feminine premonition of Count d'Orsay and our
own McAllister. Rather dull they must have been, those old Scotch
balls, where Goldsmith saw the ladies and gentlemen in two dismal
groups divided by the length of the room.

    "The Assembly Close received the fair--
    Order and elegance presided there--
    Each gay Right Honourable had her place,
    To walk a minuet with becoming grace.
    No racing to the dance with rival hurry,
    Such was thy sway, O famed Miss Nicky Murray!"

It was half past nine in the evening when Salemina and I drove to
Holyrood, our humble cab-horse jogging faithfully behind Lady Baird's
brougham, and it was the new experience of seeing Auld Reekie by
lamplight that called up these gay visions of other days,--visions and
days so thoroughly our mental property that we could not help
resenting the fact that women were hanging washing from the Countess
of Eglinton's former windows, and popping their unkempt heads out of
the Duchess of Gordon's old doorway.

The Reverend Ronald is so kind! He enters so fully into our spirit of
inquiry, and takes such pleasure in our enthusiasms! He even sprang
lightly out of Lady Baird's carriage and called to our "lamiter" to
halt while he showed us the site of the Black Turnpike, from whose
windows Queen Mary saw the last of her kingdom's capital.

"Here was the Black Turnpike, Miss Hamilton!" he cried; "and from here
Mary went to Loch Leven, where you Hamiltons and the Setons came
gallantly to her help. Don't you remember the 'far ride to the Solway
sands'?"

I looked with interest, though I was in such a state of delicious
excitement that I could scarce keep my seat.

"Only a few minutes more, Salemina," I sighed, "and we shall be in the
palace courtyard; then a probable half-hour in crowded dressing-rooms,
with another half-hour in line, and then, then we shall be making our
best republican bow in the Gallery of the Kings! How I wish Mr.
Beresford and Francesca were with us! What do you suppose was her real
reason for staying away? Some petty disagreement with our young
minister, I am sure. Do you think the dampness is taking the curl out
of our hair? Do you suppose our gowns will be torn to ribbons before
the Marchioness sees them? Do you believe we shall look as well as
anybody? Privately, I think we must look better than anybody; but I
always think that on my way to a party, never after I arrive."

Mrs. M'Collop had asserted that I was "bonnie eneuch for ony court,"
and I could not help wishing that "mine ain dear Somebody" might see
me in my French frock embroidered with silver thistles, and my "shower
bouquet" of Scottish bluebells tied loosely together. Salemina wore
pinky-purple velvet; a real heather color it was, though the Lord High
Commissioner would probably never note the fact.

When we had presented our cards of invitation at the palace doors, we
joined the throng and patiently made our way up the splendid
staircases, past powdered lackeys without number, and, divested of our
wraps, joined another throng on our way to the throne-room, Salemina
and I pressing those cards with our names "legibly written on them"
close to our palpitating breasts.

At last the moment came when, Lady Baird having preceded me, I handed
my bit of pasteboard to the usher; and hearing "Miss Hamilton" called
in stentorian accents, I went forward in my turn, and executed a
graceful and elegant but not too profound curtsy, carefully arranged
to suit the semi-royal, semi-ecclesiastical occasion. I had not
divulged the fact even to Salemina, but I had worn Mrs. M'Collop's
carpet quite threadbare in front of the long mirror, and had curtsied
to myself so many times in its crystal surface that I had developed a
sort of fictitious reverence for my reflected image. I had only begun
my well-practiced obeisance when Her Grace the Marchioness, to my
mingled surprise and embarrassment, extended a gracious hand and
murmured my name in a particularly kind voice. She is fond of Lady
Baird, and perhaps chose this method of showing her friendship; or it
may be that she noticed my silver thistles and Salemina's
heather-colored velvet,--they certainly deserved special recognition;
or it may be that I was too beautiful to pass over in silence,--in my
state of exaltation I was quite equal to the belief.

The presentation over, we wandered through the spacious apartments,
leaning from the open windows to hear the music of the band playing in
the courtyard below, looking at the royal portraits, and chatting with
groups of friends who appeared and reappeared in the throng. Finally
Lady Baird sent for us to join her in a knot of personages more and
less distinguished, who had dined at the palace, and who were standing
behind the receiving party in a sort of sacred group. This indeed was
a ground of vantage, and one could have stood there for hours,
watching all sorts and conditions of men and women bowing before the
Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness, who, with her
Cleopatra-like beauty and scarlet gown, looked like a gorgeous
cardinal-flower.

Salemina and I watched the curtsying narrowly, with the view at first
of improving our own obeisances for Buckingham Palace; but truth to
say we got no added light, and plainly most of the people had not worn
threadbare the carpets in front of their dressing-mirrors.

Suddenly we heard a familiar name announced, "Lord Colquhoun," a
distinguished judge who had lately been raised to the peerage, and
whom we often met at dinners; then "Miss Rowena Colquhoun;" and then,
in the midst, we fancied, of an unusual stir at the entrance
door--"Miss Francesca Van Buren Monroe." I involuntarily touched the
Reverend Ronald's shoulder in my astonishment, while Salemina lifted
her tortoiseshell lorgnette, and we gazed silently at our recreant
charge.

After presentation, each person has fifteen or twenty feet of awful
space to traverse in solitary and defenseless majesty; scanned
meanwhile by the maids of honor (who, if they were truly honorable,
would turn their eyes another way), ladies-in-waiting, the sacred
group in the rear, and the Purse-Bearer himself. I had supposed that
this functionary would keep the purse in his upper bureau drawer at
home, when he was not paying bills, but it seems that when on
processional duty he carries a bag of red velvet quite a yard long
over his arm, where it looks not unlike a lady's opera-cloak. It would
hold the sum total of the moneys disbursed, even if they were reduced
to the standard of vulgar copper.

Under this appalling fire of inspection, some of the victims waddle,
some hurry; some look up and down nervously, others glance over the
shoulder as if dreading to be apprehended; some turn red, others pale,
according to complexion and temperament; some swing their arms, others
trip on their gowns; some twitch the buttons of a glove, or tweak a
flower or a jewel. Francesca rose superior to all these weaknesses,
and I doubt if the Gallery of the Kings ever served as a background
for anything lovelier or more high-bred than that untitled slip of a
girl from "the States." Her trailing gown of pearl-white satin fell in
unbroken lustrous folds behind her. Her beautiful throat and shoulders
rose in statuesque whiteness from the mist of chiffon that encircled
them. Her dark hair showed a moonbeam parting that rested the eye,
wearied by the contemplation of waves and frizzes fresh from the
curling-tongs. Her mother's pearls hung in ropes from neck to waist,
and the one spot of color about her was the single American Beauty
rose she carried. There is a patriotic florist in Paris who grows
these long-stemmed empresses of the rose-garden, and Mr. Beresford
sends some to me every week. Francesca had taken the flower without
permission, and I must say she was as worthy of it as it of her.

She curtsied deeply, with no exaggerated ceremony, but with a sort of
innocent and childlike gravity, while the satin of her gown spread
itself like a great blossom over the floor. Her head was bowed until
the dark lashes swept her crimson cheeks; then she rose again from the
heart of the shimmering lily, with the one splendid rose glowing
against all her dazzling whiteness, and floated slowly across the
dreaded space to the door of exit as if she were preceded by invisible
heralds and followed by invisible train-bearers.

"Who is she?" we heard whispered here and there. "Look at the rose!"
"Look at the pearls! Is she a princess or only an American?"

I glanced at the Reverend Ronald. I imagined he looked pale; at any
rate, he was biting his under lip nervously and I believe he was in
fancy laying his serious, Scottish, allopathic, Presbyterian heart at
Francesca's gay, American, homoeopathic, Swedenborgian feet.

"It is a pity Miss Monroe is such an ardent republican," he said, with
unconcealed bitterness; "otherwise she ought to be a duchess. I never
saw a head that better suited a coronet, nor, if you will pardon me,
one that contained more caprices."

"It is true she flatly refused to accompany us here," I allowed, "but
perhaps she has some explanation more or less silly and serviceable;
meantime, I defy you to tell me she isn't a beauty, and I implore you
to say nothing about its being only skin-deep. Give me a beautiful
exterior, say I, and I will spend my life in making the hidden things
of mind and soul conform to it; but deliver me from all forlorn
attempts to make my beauty of character speak through a large mouth,
breathe through a fat nose, and look at my neighbor through crossed
eyes!"

Mr. Macdonald agreed with me, with some few ministerial reservations.
He always agrees with me, and why he is not tortured at the thought of
my being the promised bride of another, but continues to squander his
affections upon a quarrelsome and unappreciative girl, is more than I
can comprehend.

Francesca, escorted by Lord Colquhoun, appeared presently in our
group, but Salemina did not even attempt to scold her. One cannot
scold an imperious young beauty in white satin and pearls,
particularly if she is leaning nonchalantly on the arm of a peer of
the realm.

It seems that shortly after our departure (we had dined with Lady
Baird) Lord Colquhoun had sent a note to me, requiring an answer.
Francesca had opened it, and found that he offered an extra card of
invitation to one of us, and said that he and his sister would gladly
serve as escort to Holyrood, if desired. She had had an hour or two of
solitude by this time, and was well weary of it, while the last
vestige of headache disappeared under the temptation of appearing at
court with all the éclat of unexpectedness. She dispatched a note of
acceptance to Lord Colquhoun, summoned Mrs. M'Collop, Susanna, and the
maiden Boots to her assistance, spread the trays of her Saratoga
trunks about our three bedrooms, grouped all our candles on her
dressing-table, and borrowed any little elegance of toilette which we
chanced to have left behind. Her own store of adornments is much
greater than ours, but we possess certain articles for which she has a
childlike admiration: my white satin slippers embroidered with seed
pearls, Salemina's pearl-topped comb, Salemina's Valenciennes
handkerchief and diamond belt-clasp, my pearl frog with ruby eyes. We
identified our property on her impertinent young person, and the list
of her borrowings so amused the Reverend Ronald that he forgot his
injuries.

"It is really an ordeal, that presentation, no matter how strong one's
sense of humor may be, nor how well rooted one's democracy," chattered
Francesca to a serried rank of officers who surrounded her to the
total routing of the ministry. "It is especially trying if one has
come unexpectedly and has no idea of what is to happen. I was agitated
at the supreme moment, because, at the entrance of the throne-room, I
had just shaken hands reverently with a splendid person who proved to
be a footman. Of course I took him for the Commander of the Queen's
Guards, or the Keeper of the Dungeon Keys, or the Most Noble Custodian
of the Royal Moats, Drawbridges, and Portcullises. When he put out his
hand I had no idea it was simply to waft me onward, and so naturally I
shook it,--it's a mercy that I didn't kiss it! Then I curtsied to the
Royal Usher, and overlooked the Lord High Commissioner altogether,
having no eyes for any one but the beautiful scarlet Marchioness. I
only hope they were too busy to notice my mistakes, otherwise I shall
be banished from Court at the very moment of my presentation.--Do you
still banish nowadays?" turning the battery of her eyes upon a
particularly insignificant officer who was far too dazed to answer.
"Did you see the child of ten who was next to me in line? She is Mrs.
Macstronachlacher; at least that was the name on the card she carried,
and she was thus announced. As they tell us the Purse-Bearer is most
rigorous in arranging these functions and issuing the invitations, I
presume she must be Mrs. Macstronachlacher; but if so, they marry very
young in Scotland, and her skirts should really have been longer!"




XII


It is our last day in "Scotia's darling seat," our last day in
Breadalbane Terrace, our last day with Mrs. M'Collop; and though every
one says that we shall love the life in the country, we are loath to
leave Auld Reekie.

Salemina and I have spent two days in search of an abiding-place, and
have visited eight well-recommended villages with that end in view;
but she disliked four of them, and I couldn't endure the other four,
though I considered some of those that fell under her disapproval as
quite delightful in every respect.

We never take Francesca on these pilgrimages of disagreement, as three
conflicting opinions on the same subject would make insupportable what
is otherwise rather exhilarating. She starts from Edinburgh to-morrow
for a brief visit to the Highlands with the Dalziels, and will join us
when we have settled ourselves.

Mr. Beresford leaves Paris as soon after our decision as he is
permitted, so Salemina and I have agreed to agree upon one ideal spot
within thirty-six hours of our quitting Edinburgh, knowing privately
that after a last battle royal we shall enthusiastically support the
joint decision for the rest of our lives.

We have been bidding good-by to people and places and things, and
wishing the sun would not shine and thus make our task the harder. We
have looked our last on the old gray town from Calton Hill, of all
places the best, perhaps, for a view; since, as Stevenson says, from
Calton Hill you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle,
and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. We have
taken a farewell walk to the Dean Bridge, to gaze wistfully eastward
and marvel for the hundredth time to find so beautiful a spot in the
heart of a city. The soft flowing Water of Leith winding over pebbles
between grassy banks and groups of splendid trees, the roof of the
little temple to Hygeia rising picturesquely among green branches, the
slopes of emerald velvet leading up to the gray stone of the
houses,--where, in all the world of cities, can one find a view to
equal it in peaceful loveliness? Francesca's "bridge-man," who, by the
way, proved to be a distinguished young professor of medicine in the
university, says that the beautiful cities of the world should be
ranked thus,--Constantinople, Prague, Genoa, Edinburgh; but having
seen only one of these, and that the last, I refuse to credit any
sliding scale of comparison which leaves Edina at the foot.

It was nearing tea-time, an hour when we never fail to have visitors,
and we were all in the drawing-room together. I was at the piano,
singing Jacobite melodies for Salemina's delectation. When I came to
the last verse of Lady Nairne's "Hundred Pipers," the spirited words
had taken my fancy captive, and I am sure I could not have sung with
more vigor and passion had my people been "out with the Chevalier."

    "The Esk was swollen sae red an' sae deep,
    But shouther to shouther the brave lads keep;
    Twa thousand swam oure to fell English ground,
    An' danced themselves dry to the pibroch's sound.
    Dumfounder'd the English saw, they saw,
    Dumfounder'd they heard the blaw, the blaw,
    Dumfounder'd they a' ran awa', awa',
    Frae the hundred pipers an' a', an' a'!"

By the time I came to "Dumfounder'd the English saw" Francesca left
her book and joined in the next four lines, and when we broke into the
chorus Salemina rushed to the piano, and although she cannot sing, she
lifted her voice both high and loud in the refrain, beating time the
while with a dirk paper-knife.

[Transcriber's Note: A brief musical score appears in the text here,
with the lyrics:: Wi' a hun-dred pi-pers an' a', an' a', Wi' a hun-dred
pi-pers an' a', an' a', We'll up an' gie them a blaw, a blaw, Wi'
a hundred pi-pers an' a', an' a'!]

Susanna ushered in Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe as the last "blaw"
faded into silence, and Jean Dalziel came upstairs to say that they
could seldom get a quiet moment for family prayers, because we were
always at the piano, hurling incendiary sentiments into the
air,--sentiments set to such stirring melodies that no one could
resist them.

"We are very sorry, Miss Dalziel," I said penitently. "We reserve an
hour in the morning and another at bedtime for your uncle's prayers,
but we had no idea you had them at afternoon tea, even in Scotland. I
believe that you are chaffing, and came up only to swell the chorus.
Come, let us all sing together from 'Dumfounder'd the English saw.'"

Mr. Macdonald and Dr. Moncrieffe gave such splendid body to the music,
and Jean such warlike energy, that Salemina waved her paper-knife in a
manner more than ever sanguinary, and Susanna hesitated outside the
door for sheer delight, and had to be coaxed in with the tea-things.
On the heels of the tea-things came the Dominie, another dear old
friend of six weeks' standing; and while the doctor sang "Jock o'
Hazledean" with such irresistible charm that we all longed to elope
with somebody on the instant, Salemina dispensed buttered toast,
marmalade sandwiches, and the fragrant cup. By this time we were
thoroughly cosy, and Mr. Macdonald made himself and us very much at
home by stirring the fire; whereupon Francesca embarrassed him by
begging him not to touch it unless he could do it properly, which, she
added, seemed quite unlikely, from the way in which he handled the
poker.

"What will Edinburgh do without you?" he asked, turning towards us
with flattering sadness in his tone. "Who will hear our Scotch
stories, never suspecting their hoary old age? Who will ask us
questions to which we somehow always know the answers? Who will make
us study and reverence anew our own landmarks? Who will keep warm our
national and local pride by judicious enthusiasm?"

"I think the national and local pride may be counted on to exist
without any artificial stimulants," dryly observed Francesca, whose
spirit is not in the least quenched by approaching departure.

"Perhaps," answered the Reverend Ronald; "but at any rate, you, Miss
Monroe, will always be able to reflect that you have never been
responsible even for its momentary inflation!"

"Isn't it strange that she cannot get on better with that charming
fellow?" murmured Salemina, as she passed me the sugar for my second
cup.

"If your present symptoms of blindness continue, Salemina," I said,
searching for a small lump so as to gain time, "I shall write you a
plaintive ballad, buy you a dog, and stand you on a street corner! If
you had ever permitted yourself to 'get on' with any man as Francesca
is getting on with Mr. Macdonald, you would now be Mrs.--Somebody."

"Do you know, doctor," asked the Dominie, "that Miss Hamilton shed
real tears at Holyrood, the other night, when the band played 'Bonnie
Charlie's now awa'?"

"They were real," I confessed, "in the sense that they certainly were
not crocodile tears; but I am somewhat at a loss to explain them from
a sensible, American standpoint. Of course my Jacobitism is purely
impersonal, though scarcely more so than yours, at this late day; at
least it is merely a poetic sentiment, for which Caroline, Baroness
Nairne is mainly responsible. My romantic tears came from a vision of
the Bonnie Prince as he entered Holyrood, dressed in his short tartan
coat, his scarlet breeches and military boots, the star of St. Andrew
on his breast, a blue ribbon over his shoulder, and the famous blue
velvet bonnet and white cockade. He must have looked so brave and
handsome and hopeful at that moment, and the moment was so sadly
brief, that when the band played the plaintive air I kept hearing the
words,--

    'Mony a heart will break in twa,
    Should he no come back again.'

He did come back again to me that evening, and held a phantom levee
behind the Marchioness of Heatherdale's shoulder. His 'ghaist' looked
bonnie and rosy and confident, yet all the time the band was playing
the requiem for his lost cause and buried hopes."

I looked towards the fire to hide the moisture that crept again into
my eyes, and my glance fell upon Francesca sitting dreamily on a
hassock in front of the cheerful blaze, her chin in the hollow of her
palm, and the Reverend Ronald standing on the hearth-rug gazing at
her, the poker in his hand, and his heart, I regret to say, in such an
exposed position on his sleeve that even Salemina could have seen it
had she turned her eyes that way.

Jean Dalziel broke the momentary silence: "I am sure I never hear the
last two lines,--

    'Better lo'ed ye canna be,
    Will ye no come back again?'

without a lump in my throat," and she hummed the lovely melody. "It is
all as you say purely impersonal and poetic. My mother is an
Englishwoman, but she sings 'Dumfounder'd the English saw, they saw,'
with the greatest fire and fury."




XIII


"I think I was never so completely under the spell of a country as I
am of Scotland." I made this acknowledgment freely, but I knew that it
would provoke comment from my compatriots.

"Oh yes, my dear, you have been just as spellbound before, only you
don't remember it," replied Salemina promptly. "I have never seen a
person more perilously appreciative or receptive than you."

"'Perilously' is just the word," chimed in Francesca delightedly;
"when you care for a place you grow porous, as it were, until after a
time you are precisely like blotting-paper. Now, there was Italy, for
example. After eight weeks in Venice you were completely Venetian,
from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an
Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to
teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the
art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was repulsive to
you. Cobblestones? 'Ordinario, dúro, brútto! A gondola? Ah,
bellissima! Let me float forever thus!' You bathed your spirit in
sunshine and color; I can hear you murmur now, 'O Venezia benedetta!
non ti voglio lasciar!'"

"It was just the same when she spent a month in France with the
Baroness de Hautenoblesse," continued Salemina. "When she returned to
America it is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection,
manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant
superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never
forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign
language,--the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all
topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was
never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no
affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of blotting-paper, as
Miss Monroe says, and France had written itself all over her."

"I don't wish to interfere with anybody's diagnosis," I interposed at
the first possible moment, "but perhaps after you've both finished
your psychologic investigation the subject may be allowed to explain
herself from the inside, so to speak. I won't deny the spell of Italy,
but I think the spell that Scotland casts over one is quite a
different thing, more spiritual, more difficult to break. Italy's
charm has something physical in it; it is born of blue sky, sunlit
waves, soft atmosphere, orange sails and yellow moons, and appeals
more to the senses. In Scotland the climate certainly has naught to do
with it, but the imagination is somehow made captive. I am not
enthralled by the past of Italy or France, for instance."

"Of course you are not at the present moment," said Francesca,
"because you are enthralled by the past of Scotland, and even you
cannot be the slave of two pasts at the same time."

"I never was particularly enthralled by Italy's past," I argued with
exemplary patience, "but the romance of Scotland has a flavor all its
own. I do not quite know the secret of it."

"It's the kilts and the pipes," said Francesca.

"No, the history." (This from Salemina.)

"Or Sir Walter and the literature," suggested Mr. Macdonald.

"Or the songs and ballads," ventured Jean Dalziel.

"There!" I exclaimed triumphantly, "you see for yourselves you have
named avenue after avenue along which one's mind is led in charmed
subjection. Where can you find battles that kindle your fancy like
Falkirk and Flodden and Culloden and Bannockburn? Where a sovereign
that attracts, baffles, repels, allures, like Mary Queen of
Scots,--and where, tell me where, is there a Pretender like Bonnie
Prince Charlie? Think of the spirit in those old Scottish matrons who
could sing:--

    'I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel,
    My rippling-kame and spinning-wheel,

    To buy my lad a tartan plaid,
    A braid sword, durk, and white cockade.'"

"Yes," chimed in Salemina when I had finished quoting, "or that other
verse that goes,--

    'I ance had sons, I now hae nane,
      I bare them toiling sairlie;
    But I would bear them a' again
      To lose them a' for Charlie!'

Isn't the enthusiasm almost beyond belief at this distance of time?"
she went on; "and isn't it a curious fact, as Mr. Macdonald told me a
moment ago, that though the whole country was vocal with songs for the
lost cause and the fallen race, not one in favor of the victors ever
became popular?"

"Sympathy for the under dog, as Miss Monroe's countrywomen would say
picturesquely," remarked Mr. Macdonald.

"I don't see why all the vulgarisms in the dictionary should be
foisted on the American girl," retorted Francesca loftily, "unless,
indeed, it is a determined attempt to find spots upon the sun for fear
we shall worship it!"

"Quite so, quite so!" returned the Reverend Ronald, who has had reason
to know that this phrase reduces Miss Monroe to voiceless rage.

"The Stuart charm and personal magnetism must have been a powerful
factor in all that movement," said Salemina, plunging hastily back
into the topic to avert any further recrimination. "I suppose we feel
it even now, and if I had been alive in 1745 I should probably have
made myself ridiculous. 'Old maiden ladies,' I read this morning,
'were the last leal Jacobites in Edinburgh; spinsterhood in its
loneliness remained ever true to Prince Charlie and the vanished
dreams of youth.'"

"Yes," continued the Dominie, "the story is told of the last of those
Jacobite ladies who never failed to close her Prayer-Book and stand
erect in silent protest when the prayer for 'King George III. and the
reigning family' was read by the congregation."

"Do you remember the prayer of the Reverend Neil McVicar in St.
Cuthbert's?" asked Mr. Macdonald. "It was in 1745, after the victory
at Prestonpans, when a message was sent to the Edinburgh ministers, in
the name of 'Charles, Prince Regent,' desiring them to open their
churches next day as usual. McVicar preached to a large congregation,
many of whom were armed Highlanders, and prayed for George II., and
also for Charles Edward, in the following fashion: 'Bless the king!
Thou knowest what king I mean. May the crown sit long upon his head!
As for that young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown,
we beseech Thee to take him to Thyself and give him a crown of
glory!'"

"Ah, what a pity the Bonnie Prince had not died after his meteor
victory at Falkirk!" exclaimed Jean Dalziel, when we had finished
laughing at Mr. Macdonald's story.

"Or at Culloden, 'where, quenched in blood on the Muir of Drummossie,
the star of the Stuarts sank forever,'" quoted the Dominie. "There is
where his better self died; would that the young Chevalier had died
with it! By the way, doctor, we must not sit here eating goodies and
sipping tea until the dinner-hour, for these ladies have doubtless
much to do for their flitting" (a pretty Scots word for "moving").

"We are quite ready for our flitting so far as packing is concerned,"
Salemina assured him. "Would that we were as ready in spirit! Miss
Hamilton has even written her farewell poem, which I am sure she will
read for the asking."

"She will read it without that formality," murmured Francesca. "She
has lived and toiled only for this moment, and the poem is in her
pocket."

"Delightful!" said the doctor flatteringly. "Has she favored you
already? Have you heard it, Miss Monroe?"

"Have we heard it!" ejaculated that young person. "We have heard
nothing else all the morning! What you will take for local color is
nothing but our mental life-blood, which she has mercilessly drawn to
stain her verses. We each tried to write a Scottish poem, and as Miss
Hamilton's was better, or perhaps I might say less bad, than ours, we
encouraged her to develop and finish it. I wanted to do an imitation
of Lindsay's

    'Adieu, Edinburgh! thou heich triumphant town,
    Within whose bounds richt blithefull have I been!'

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"--

"I don't see the connection," rudely interrupted that spirited young
person.

"I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had
in Edinburgh; but if my remembrance serves me, she always enrolls a
goodly number of victims, whether she has any immediate use for them
or not."

"Mr. Beresford's manners have not been improved by his residence in
Paris," observed Francesca, with resentment in her tone and delight in
her eye.

"Mr. Beresford's manners are always perfect," said Salemina loyally,
"and I have no doubt that this visit to Lady Ardmore will be extremely
pleasant for him, though very embarrassing to us. If we are thrown
into forced intimacy with a castle" (Salemina spoke of it as if it had
fangs and a lashing tail), "what shall we do in this draper's hut?"

"Salemina!" I expostulated, "the bears will devour you as they did the
ungrateful child in the fairy-tale. I wonder at your daring to use the
word 'hut' in connection with our wee theekit hoosie!"

"They will never understand that we are doing all this for the novelty
of it," she objected. "The Scottish nobility and gentry probably never
think of renting a house for a joke. Imagine Lord and Lady Ardmore,
the young Ardmores, Robin Anstruther, and Willie Beresford calling
upon us in this sitting-room! We ourselves would have to sit in the
hall and talk in through the doorway."

"All will be well," Francesca assured her soothingly. "We shall be
pardoned much because we are Americans, and will not be expected to
know any better. Besides, the gifted Miss Hamilton is an artist, and
that covers a multitude of sins against conventionality. When the
castle people 'tirl at the pin,' I will appear as the maid, if you
like, following your example at Mrs. Bobby's cottage in Belvern,
Pen."

"And it isn't as if there were many houses to choose from, Salemina,
nor as if Bide-a-Wee Cottage were cheap," I continued. "Think of the
rent we pay and keep your head high. Remember that the draper's wife
says there is nothing half so comfortable in Inchcaldy, although that
is twice as large a town."

"_Inchcaldy!_" ejaculated Francesca, sitting down heavily upon the
sofa and staring at me.

"Inchcaldy, my dear,--spelled _caldy_, but pronounced _cawdy_; the
town where you are to take your nonsensical little fripperies to be
laundered."

"Where is Inchcaldy? How far away?"

"About five miles, I believe, but a lovely road."

"Well," she exclaimed bitterly, "of course Scotland is a small,
insignificant country; but, tiny as it is, it presents some liberty of
choice, and why you need have pitched upon Pettybaw, and brought me
here, when it is only five miles from Inchcaldy, and a lovely road
besides, is more than I can understand!"

"In what way has Inchcaldy been so unhappy as to offend you?" I
asked.

"It has not offended me, save that it chances to be Ronald Macdonald's
parish,--that is all."

"Ronald Macdonald's parish!" we repeated automatically.

"Certainly,--you must have heard him mention Inchcaldy; and how queer
he will think it that I have come to Pettybaw, under all the
circumstances!"

"We do not know 'all the circumstances,'" quoted Salemina somewhat
haughtily; "and you must remember, my dear, that our opportunities for
speech with Mr. Macdonald have been very rare when you were present.
For my part, I was always in such a tremor of anxiety during his
visits lest one or both of you should descend to blows that I remember
no details of his conversation. Besides, we did not choose Pettybaw;
we discovered it by chance as we were driving from Strathdee to St.
Rules. How were we to know that it was near this fatal Inchcaldy? If
you think it best, we will hold no communication with the place, and
Mr. Macdonald need never know you are here."

I thought Francesca looked rather startled at this proposition. At all
events she said hastily, "Oh well, let it go; we could not avoid each
other long, anyway, though it is very awkward, of course; you see, we
did not part friends."

"I thought I had never seen you on more cordial terms," remarked
Salemina.

"But you weren't there," answered Francesca unguardedly.

"Weren't where?"

"Weren't there."

"Where?"

"At the station."

"What station?"

"The station in Edinburgh from which I started for the Highlands."

"You never said that he came to see you off."

"The matter was too unimportant for notice; and the more I think of
his being here, the less I mind it, after all; and so, dull care,
begone! When I first meet him on the sands or in the loaning, I shall
say, 'Dear me, is it Mr. Macdonald! What brought you to our quiet
hamlet?' (I shall put the responsibility on him, you know.) 'That is
the worst of these small countries,--fowk are aye i' the gait! When we
part forever in America, we are able to stay parted, if we wish.' Then
he will say, 'Quite so, quite so; but I suppose even you, Miss Monroe,
will allow that a minister may not move his church to please a lady.'
'Certainly not,' I shall reply, 'eespecially when it is Estaiblished!'
Then he will laugh, and we shall be better friends for a few moments;
and then I shall tell him my latest story about the Scotchman who
prayed, 'Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only
show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.'"

Salemina moaned at the delightful prospect opening before us, while I
went to the piano and caroled impersonally:--

    "Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,
      And leave my love behind me?
    Why did I venture to the north
      With one that did not mind me?
    I'm sure I've seen a better limb
      And twenty better faces;
    But still my mind it runs on him
      When I am at the races!"

Francesca left the room at this, and closed the door behind her with
such energy that the bust of Sir Walter rocked on the hall shelf.
Running upstairs she locked herself in her bedroom, and came down
again only to help us receive Jane Grieve, who arrived at eight
o'clock.

In times of joy, Salemina, Francesca, and I occasionally have our
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 sev

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