Penelope's Progress Part 11

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 c.o.c.kade, 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 brandis.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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, la.s.sie, 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 a.s.sure 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 n.o.body 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! _Pet.i.t 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 s.h.i.+ning 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, n.o.bly 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 pa.s.s the night, trying thus the bed and breakfast, with a view to seeing what they are like,--though they did say in Edinburgh that n.o.body 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 a.s.sistant 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+nes 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 a.s.surance, 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 a.s.sociation 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!"'