“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 noo 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—
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—
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.”
Chapter XIII. The spell of Scotland
“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, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float for ever thus!’ You bathed your spirit in sunshine and colour; 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 nought 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 flavour 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.
“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—
“Yes,” chimed in Salemina when I had finished quoting, “or that other verse that goes—
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 favour 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.