Penelope's Progress Part 16

"Oh, it is grand!" he repeated jubilantly. "If I could only be the king and see it all from Dunfermline tower! Could you be Sir Patrick once, do you think, now that I have shown you how?" he asked Francesca.

"Indeed I could!" she replied, glowing with excitement (and small wonder) at being chosen for the princ.i.p.al role.

"The only trouble is that you do look awfully like a girl in that white frock."

Francesca appeared rather ashamed at her natural disqualifications for the part of Sir Patrick. "If I had only worn my long black cloak!" she sighed.

"Oh, I have an idea!" cried the boy. "Hand her the minister's gown from the hedge, Rafe. You see, Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe lent us this old gown for a sail; she's doing something to a new one, and this was her pattern."

Francesca slipped it on over her white serge, and the Pettybaw parson should have seen her with the long veil of her dark locks floating over his ministerial garment.

"It seems a pity to put up your hair," said the stage manager critically, "because you look so jolly and wild with it down, but I suppose you must; and will you have Rafe's bonnet?"

Yes, she would have Rafe's bonnet; and when she perched it on the side of her head and paced the deck restlessly, while the black gown floated behind in the breeze, we all cheered with enthusiasm, and, having rebuilt the ship, began the play again from the moment of the gale. The wreck was more horribly realistic than ever, this time, because of our rehearsal; and when I crawled from under the masts and sails to seat myself on the beach with the Wrig, I had scarcely strength enough to remove the cooky from her hand and set her a-combing her curly locks.

When our new Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard pillow of Jessie's wild flowers.

"Oh, it is fine, that part; but from here is where it always goes wrong!" cried the king from the castle tower. "It's too bad to take the maidens away from the strand where they look so bonnie, and Rafe is splendid as the gude sailor, but Dandie looks so silly as one little dead Scots lord; if we only had one more person, young or old, if he was ever so stupid!"

"_Would I do?_"

This unexpected offer came from behind one of the trees that served as topmasts, and at the same moment there issued from that delightfully secluded retreat Ronald Macdonald, in knickerbockers and a golf cap.

Suddenly as this apparition came, there was no lack of welcome on the children's part. They shouted his name in glee, embraced his legs, and pulled him about like affectionate young bears. Confusion reigned for a moment, while Sir Patrick rose from her sea grave all in a mist of floating hair, from which hung impromptu garlands of pink thyme and green gra.s.ses.

"Allow me to do the honors, please, Jamie," said Mr. Macdonald, when he could escape from the children's clutches. "Have you been properly presented? I suppose not. Ladies, the young Master of Rowardennan.

Jamie, Miss Hamilton and Miss Monroe from the United States of America." Sir Apple-Cheek bowed respectfully. "Let me present the Honorable Ralph Ardmore, also from the castle, together with Dandie Dinmont and the Wrig from Crummylowe. Sir Patrick, it is indeed a pleasure to see you again. Must you take off my gown? I had thought it was past use, but it never looked so well before."

"_Your_ gown?"

The counterfeit presentment of Sir Patrick vanished as the long drapery flew to the hedge whence it came, and there remained only an offended young G.o.ddess, who swung her dark mane tempestuously to one side, plaited it in a thick braid, tossed it back again over her white serge shoulder, and crowded on her sailor hat with unnecessary vehemence.

"Yes, _my_ gown; whose else could you more appropriately borrow, pray?

Mistress Ogilvie of Crummylowe presses, sponges, and darns my bachelor wardrobe, but I confess I never suspected that she rented it out for theatrical purposes. I have been calling upon you in Pettybaw; Lady Ardmore was there at the same time. Finding but one of the three American Graces at home, I stayed a few moments only, and am now returning to Inchcaldy by way of Crummylowe." Here he plucked the gown off the hedge and folded it carefully.

"Can't we keep it for a sail, Mr. Macdonald?" pleaded Jamie. "Mistress Ogilvie said it wasn't any more good."

"When Mistress Ogilvie made that remark," replied the Reverend Ronald, "she had no idea that it would ever touch the shoulders of the martyred Sir Patrick Spens. Now I happen to love"--

Francesca hung out a scarlet flag in each cheek, and I was about to say, "Don't mind me!" when he continued:--

"As I was saying, I happen to love 'Sir Patrick Spens,'--it is my favorite ballad; so, with your permission, I will take the gown, and you can find something less valuable for a sail!"

I could never understand just why Francesca was so annoyed at being discovered in our innocent game. Of course she was p.r.o.ne on Mother Earth and her tresses were much disheveled, but she looked lovely, after all, in comparison with me, the humble "supe" and lightning-change artist; yet I kept my temper,--at least I kept it until the Reverend Ronald observed, after escorting us through the gap in the wall, "By the way, Miss Hamilton, there was a gentleman from Paris at your cottage, and he is walking down the road to meet you."

Walking down the road to meet me, forsooth! Have ministers no brains?

The Reverend Mr. Macdonald had wasted five good minutes with his observations, introductions, explanations, felicitations, and adorations, and meantime, regardez-moi, messieurs et mesdames, s'il vous plait! I have been a Noroway dog, a ship-builder, and a gallant sailorman; I have been a gurly sea and a towering gale; I have crawled from beneath broken anchors, topsails, and mizzenmasts to a strand where I have been a suffering lady plying a gowd kaim. My skirt of blue drill has been twisted about my person until it trails in front; my collar is wilted, my cravat untied; I have lost a stud and a sleeve-link; my hair is in a tangled ma.s.s, my face is scarlet and dusty--and a gentleman from Paris is walking down the road to meet me!

XVIII

"There were three ladies in a hall-- With a heigh-ho! and a lily gay, There came a lord among them all-- As the primrose spreads so sweetly."

_The Cruel Brother_.

Willie Beresford has come to Pettybaw, and that Arcadian village has received the last touch that makes it Paradise.

We are exploring the neighborhood together, and whichever path we take we think it lovelier than the one before. This morning we drove to Pettybaw Sands, Francesca and Salemina following by the footpath and meeting us on the sh.o.r.e. It is all so enchantingly fresh and green on one of these rare bright days: the trig la.s.s bleaching her "claes" on the gra.s.s by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild partridges whirring about in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages, and the gardens with rows of currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests jam and tart in every delicious globule. It is a love-colored landscape, we know it full well; and nothing in the fair world about us is half as beautiful as what we see in each other's eyes. Ah, the memories of these first golden mornings together after our long separation. I shall sprinkle them with lavender and lay them away in that dim chamber of the heart where we keep precious things. We all know the chamber. It is fragrant with other hidden treasures, for all of them are sweet, though some are sad. This is the reason why we put a finger on the lip and say "Hush," if we open the door and allow any one to peep in.

We tied the pony by the wayside and alighted: Willie to gather some sprays of the pink veronica and blue speedwell, I to sit on an old bench and watch him in happy idleness. The "white-blossomed slaes"

sweetened the air, and the distant hills were gay with golden whin and broom, or flushed with the purply-red of the bell heather.

We heard the note of the cushats from a neighboring bush. They used to build their nests on the ground, so the story goes, but the cows trampled them. Now they are wiser and build higher, and their cry is supposed to be a derisive one, directed to their ancient enemies, "Come noo, Coo, Coo! Come noo!"

A hedgehog crept stealthily along the ground, and at a sudden sound curled himself up like a wee brown bear. There were women working in the fields near by,--a strange sight to our eyes at first, but nothing unusual here, where many of them are employed on the farms all the year round, sowing, weeding, planting, even ploughing in the spring, and in winter working at threshing or in the granary.

An old man, leaning on his staff, came tottering feebly along, and sank down on the bench beside me. He was dirty, ragged, unkempt, and feeble, but quite sober, and pathetically anxious for human sympathy.

"I'm achty-sax year auld," he maundered, apropos of nothing, "achty-sax year auld. I've seen five lairds o' Pettybaw, sax placed meenisters, an' seeven doctors. I was a mason an' a stoot mon i' thae days, but it's a meeserable life now. Wife deid, bairns deid! I sit by my lane, an' smoke my pipe, wi' naebody to gi'e me a sup o' water.

Achty-sax is ower auld for a mon,--ower auld."

These are the sharp contrasts of life one cannot bear to face when one is young and happy. Willie gave him a half-crown and some tobacco for his pipe, and when the pony trotted off briskly, and we left the shrunken figure alone on his bench as he was lonely in his life, we kissed each other and pledged ourselves to look after him as long as we remain in Pettybaw; for what is love worth if it does not kindle the flames of spirit, open the gates of feeling, and widen the heart to shelter all the little loves and great loves that crave admittance?

As we neared the tiny fishing-village on the sands we met a fishwife brave in her short skirt and eight petticoats, the basket with its two hundred pound weight on her head, and the auld wife herself knitting placidly as she walked along. They look superbly strong, these women; but, to be sure, the "weak anes dee," as one of them told me.

There was an air of bustle about the little quay,--

"That joyfu' din when the boats come in, When the boats come in sae early; When the lift is blue an' the herring-nets fu', And the sun glints in a' things rarely."

The silvery shoals of fish no longer come so near the sh.o.r.e as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan's had its tongue tied when the "draive" was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away the shining myriads of the deep.

We climbed the shoulder of a great green cliff until we could sit on the rugged rocks at the top and overlook the sea. The bluff is well named Nirly Scaur, and a wild, desolate spot it is, with gray lichen-clad boulders and stunted heather on its summit. In a storm here, the wind buffets and slashes and scourges one like invisible whips, and below, the sea churns itself into foaming waves, driving its "infinite squadrons of wild white horses" eternally toward the sh.o.r.e. It was calm and blue to-day, and no sound disturbed the quiet save the incessant shriek and scream of the rock birds, the kittiwakes, black-headed gulls, and guillemots that live on the sides of these high, sheer craigs. Here the mother guillemot lays her single egg, and here, on these narrow shelves of precipitous rock, she holds it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan principles; for the moment he is out of the sh.e.l.l he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures, and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots keep up a ceaseless clang of excited conversation, a very riot and wrangle of altercation and argument which the circ.u.mstances seem to warrant. The prospective father is obliged to take turns with the prospective mother and hold the one precious egg on the rock while she goes for a fly, a swim, a bite, and a sup. As there are five hundred other parents on the same rock, and the eggs look to be only a couple of inches apart, the scene must be distracting, and I have no doubt we should find, if statistics were gathered, that thousands of guillemots die of nervous prostration.

Willie and I interpreted the clamor somewhat as follows:--

[_Between parent birds._]

"I am going to take my foot off. Are you ready to put yours on? Don't be clumsy! Wait a minute, I'm not ready. _I'm not ready, I tell you!_ NOW!!"

[_Between rival mothers_.]

"Your egg is so close to mine that I can't breathe"--

"Move your egg, then, I can't move mine!"

"You're sitting so close, I can't stretch my wings."