A Lame Dog's Diary Part 19

"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. ---- has foundered with all hands."

"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "and then the coffee with the crystallized sugar--not the brown--and open the drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there.... What were you saying? How sad these things are!"

The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over river and hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever has time to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of a store-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful than anything which the realms of Nature can offer.

When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for making puddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises her about spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the back door. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a young lady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a training for her as a wife. She belonged to the period when a girl with a taste for music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be able to play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised to be an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in order when her husband should descend to breakfast. And now that that husband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald's homely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves into an end, a finality of effort. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be a housekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots and preserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of her horizon.

Eliza Jamieson would probably tell us that even though Mrs. Macdonald's soups and preserves are excellent, these culinary efforts should not be the highest things required of a wife by her husband, and that therefore they are not a wife's highest duty, even during the time that her husband remains with her. And she would probably point out that servants and weekly bills, and an endeavour to render this creature complacent, have ruined many a woman's life. And I laugh as I think of Palestrina's rejoinder, "But then it is so much pleasanter when they are complacent."

One certainly imagined that the late Mr. Macdonald must have been well looked after during his life, and it was something of a shock to me to hear the account of his death, from the lodgekeeper's wife, one afternoon when she had come in to help with the cleaning, and was arranging my dressing-table for me. The rest of my bedroom furniture was then standing in the pa.s.sage, and I had found my cap in one of the spare bedrooms, and all the boots of the house in the hall.

"He was a rale decent gentleman," said Mrs. Gemmil, "and awfy patient with the cleaning. But I am sure whiles I was sorry for him. He was shuft.i.t and shuft.i.t, and never knew in the morn whichna bed in the hoose he would be sleeping in at nicht. And we a' ken that it was the spring-cleaning, when he was pit to sleep ower the stables, that was, under Providence, the death o' him. He had aye to cross ower in the wat at nicht-time, and he juist took a pair o' cauld feet, and they settled on his lungs."

The day following my chat with Mrs. Gemmil was the day Palestrina found a house such as she had been looking for all along. The day was Sat.u.r.day. Overnight she had announced her intention of being away all day, and Mrs. Macdonald had said delightedly that that would suit her admirably. "I do like the servants to have the entire day for the pa.s.sages on Sat.u.r.day," she remarked.

Even when the day dawned wet and cloudy, Palestrina had not the courage to suggest that she should stay at home, and thereby interfere with the cleaning of the pa.s.sages.

The house she had found seemed to be everything that was desirable, and Palestrina returned in an elated frame of mind. "It is far away from everything," she said, "except the village people and the minister, and the 'big hoose,' as they call it, which some English bodies have rented for the autumn."

"It can't be far from the Melfords," said Thomas, pulling out a map.

"Yes, I thought so; they are just the other side of the loch."

"We 'mussed the connaketion' on our way back," said Palestrina; "and I do believe there's nothing a Scottish porter enjoys telling one so much as this."

"I hope I am not unduly disparaging the railway system of my native land," said Thomas, "when I say that if you go by steamer and by train it is the remark that usually greets one, and it is always made in a tone of humorous satisfaction." And Thomas, with an exaggerated Scottish accent, which he does uncommonly well, began to tell me of their adventures. "We had a rush for the train," he said, "and I told an elderly Scot, who couldn't have hurried if he had had a mad bull behind him, to run and get us two first-cla.s.s tickets. He walked slowly down the platform, muttering, 'Furrst, furrst,' and then he opened the door of a third-cla.s.s carriage and shoved us in, saying, 'Ye've no occasion to travel furrst when there's plenty of room in the thurrds.'"

CHAPTER XVII.

To get to the house one takes a steamer to the head of the loch, and from there old Hughie drives one in the coach, and deposits one at the cross-roads where the turf, short and green, is cut into the shape of a heart. On this green heart, in the old days, the girls and men of the glen were married. They stood side by side on the upper part of the heart, which is indented, and the minister stood at the point and wedded the pair. Here one leaves the coach, and a "machine" must take one on to the little house. A red creeper grows up its white walls, and from the terrace in front of the house one looks down upon the little Presbyterian church and the village, and these in their turn look on to the loch and the hills on the other side.

The people in the village afford one a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt, but we have observed that the conversation is always about theology or the Royal Family. There is one story of the late Queen and the crown of Scotland which I have heard repeated many times with the utmost gravity in the Highlands.

"A gran' wumman," say the old villagers, "but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland. Na, na. She would hae liked fine tae hev gotten it, but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland.

Ye'll mind when she went tae Scotland, it was the foremost thing that she spiered tae see. And when they showed it tae her, 'I would like fine tae pit it on ma heid,' said she. But they said '_No_.' And syne she says, 'Wad ye no let me haud it in ma haund?' But they say '_No_.'

'Weel,' she says, 'juist haud it aboon ma heid, and let me staun'

underneath it.' But they said, '_No_.'"

The villagers formed our only society until Evan Sinclair's tenants, who were known as "the folk at the big hoose," came to call upon us.

It was very difficult indeed, and for some time we could hardly believe that these were the Finlaysons whom we had met at Clarkham, and who, we now remembered, had told us that they were going to take a place in Scotland. The change in the Finlaysons is startling and complete. It has taken them exactly two months to become Highlanders, and it is not too much to affirm that now the whole family may be said to reek of tartan. Only Mrs. Finlayson is unaffected by her life in the Highlands, although she says that she knows it is fashionable to be Scottish. "And so written up as it is at present," she adds; "and all the best people taking the deer-moors. Papa and the girls think all the world of Scotland. But no one can say it is comfortable, I'm sure."

The Finlaysons have a piper, and young Mr. Finlayson wears a kilt, and I think they are, without exception, the most strenuous supporters of Scottish customs I have ever met. The young ladies, who had always been a.s.sociated in our mind with silk dresses and thin shoes, came to call clad in the very shortest and roughest tweed skirts that I have ever seen; and old Mr. Finlayson, whose mother was a Robinson, has discovered that that is pretty much the same as being a Robertson, and that therefore, in some mysterious way, he is ent.i.tled to wear the Macdonald tartan. They asked us to tea in a very polite and friendly way, and the old rooms were shown off to us with a good deal of pride.

The architecture of the house seemed to throw a reflected glory on Mr.

Finlayson.

"Pure Early Scottish," he said, pointing to the tall narrow windows with their shelving ledges.

"So dangerous," said Mrs. Finlayson, "for the servants cleaning the windows."

The drawing-room vases were all filled with heather, and the room smelt of damp dog and herrings. The Miss Finlaysons came in to tea in thick skirts and brogues, and they wore tartan tam-o'-shanters very becomingly placed upon their heads, and affixed to their hair with ornamental bonnet-pins. They ate cake with damp red hands, and seemed to pride themselves upon the fish-scales which still clung to their skirts, and imparted the rather unpleasant odour which I noticed in the room. Young Finlayson in his kilt showed a great expanse of red knee, and told tales of remarks made to him by the boatmen, which he considered equal to anything in Ian Maclaren's books.

Mrs. Finlayson took us out after tea to see the garden and tennis-court and the game-larder. "I always like a walled garden," she said; "it is so stylish." Mr. Finlayson found a reflected glory even in the loch and the hills, and he waved his fat hand towards them, and said: "We are able to do you a nice bit of view here, aren't we?"

"I tell papa," said Mrs. Finlayson, "that he will ruin the girls for anything else after this. The only thing we regret is the want of society. However, a few of the best people round about have called, and we are giving quite an informal little dinner-party to-morrow night."

Mrs. Finlayson then invited us to dinner, and when we hesitated, on the plea that we should have one or two friends with us, Mrs. Finlayson, in the most hospitable manner possible, said that she always had a "profusion on their own table," so there was nothing for it but to accept her invitation.

The dinner was one of those rather purposeless feasts which are given in the country, and the Finlaysons' neighbours who had been bidden to it bore upon their faces the peculiarly homeless look which one observes in the expressions of one's men friends especially, when they go out to a rural dinner--the look that says as plainly as possible that they are moving about in worlds not realized nor found particularly comfortable, and that they would infinitely prefer their own armchairs at home.

The minister took Palestrina in to dinner, and occupied himself throughout the evening by putting the most searching questions to her of an inquisitive nature. He asked how many servants we had, whether we were satisfied with our cook, where we came from, and why we had come. And he did it all with such keen interest and intelligence that Palestrina admitted that she really had felt flattered rather than provoked. His friend Evan Sinclair, who, having let his house to the Finlaysons, is living on a little farm close by, contradicted everything that the minister said, and the two quarrelled the whole evening.

Old Tyne Drum, who lives a good many miles away, but who with his wife had already been to call upon us, brewed himself the very largest gla.s.ses of whisky-toddy that I have ever seen, even on a big night at mess, and he proposed healths and drank the steaming mixture throughout dinner in a very commendable national spirit. His piper, who stood behind his chair, refused at last to pour out any further libations, and I heard him mutter to himself, "Ye'll no need tae say that Sandy Macnichol ever helpit ye tae the deil."

Young Finlayson is always very jocose upon the subject of whisky, as befits his ideas about the Highlands; and even the Misses Finlayson, in their faithful loyalty to all things Scottish, were quite pleased with Tyne Drum's performance, and would have scorned to look as though a whisky-drinking laird was a novelty to them.

Mrs. Finlayson told Thomas, in a very severe manner, and in her platform voice which I always find so impressive, that she considered intemperance a sin, but that that was what came of all this nonsense about Scotland. She gave him quite a lecture upon the subject, as though he, being Scottish born, was responsible for the old laird's backsliding.

When the unfortunate old gentleman came into the drawing-room to join the ladies and sat down next him, Mrs. Finlayson looked at Thomas as though she thought he was in some sort to blame for this behaviour.

Tyne Drum dropped heavily on to the ottoman, and I heard him say, "Do you know my wife?"

"Yes," replied Thomas. "I have met her several times since we came to the cottage."

"Hoo old should ye think she was?" (Tyne Drum is always broadly Doric in his speech.) Thomas calculated that the lady must be a long way the wrong side of sixty, and humbly suggested that she might perhaps be forty-five.

"Presairve us!" said the Laird. "This lad here says my wife is forty-five!" He began to sob bitterly, and, putting his handkerchief to his eyes, cried, "My pretty wee Jeannie, my bonnie wee wife, wha daurs tae say ye was forty-five!"

Thomas was so sorry for him and for what he had done that he did his best to cheer him up by telling him that what he had meant to say was twenty-five; but Tyne Drum was inconsolable, and went to sleep with the tear-drops on his cheeks.

When we got home in the evening Palestrina said, "We are far behind the Finlaysons in all things Scottish. I shall buy a Harris tweed skirt, and you and Thomas must buy something too." So we drove down in the coach to the ferry on a very wet and windy day to cross over to the "toon."

Our place on the coach was shared with a Scot, who was the most truculent defender of the Free Kirk I have ever met. He argued every single point of his creed, and became quite abusive at last, as he denounced the "Established" and all who belong to it.

The wind was high as we drove in the coach, and the rain fell heavily once or twice, but the voice of the gentleman rose higher and higher as the rain descended. Hughie, the coachman, chided him with no stint of words, and at every burst of eloquence on the pa.s.senger's part he remarked, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in the ditch!"

This method of treating the argumentative pa.s.senger suggested the possibility of the coach being overturned in order to punish him, and Palestrina grew alarmed.

"I do hope," she said to Hughie, "that you will remember that we are not all Wee Frees, and that therefore we do not all require the same treatment meted out to us."

The guard at the back of the coach here showed his head over the pile of boxes covered with tarpaulin on the roof, and called out, "Pit him inside the coach wi' Mrs. Macfadyen, and she'll sort him! She'll gie him the Gaelic!"

Hughie chuckled and remarked, "Ay, she's the gran' wumman wi' her tongue!" And during the rest of the drive his threats to the eloquent pa.s.senger took the form of, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in wi' Mrs.

Macfadyen!"

There was a marked improvement in our friend's behaviour after this.

He was in great difficulties when he came to get into the ferry-boat.

It was easy enough to throw his first leg over the side while holding on by a thole-pin, but the balance required to convey the remaining limb into the boat was quite out of his power. And having made one or two ineffectual hops on the beach with the sh.o.r.e-loving member, he turned to the boatmen, and said gravely,--