“‘Very probably,’ I remarked, as thoroughly angry now as he intended I should be. ‘We cannot expect you to appreciate all the American poets; indeed, you cannot appreciate all of your own, for the same nation doesn’t always furnish the writers and the readers. Take your precious Browning, for example! There are hundreds of Browning Clubs in America, and I never heard of a single one in Scotland.’
“‘No,’ he retorted, ‘I dare say; but there is a good deal in belonging to a people who can understand him without clubs!’”
“O Francesca!” I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright among my pillows. “How could you give him that chance! How COULD you! What did you say?”
“I said nothing,” she replied mysteriously. “I did something much more to the point,—I cried!”
“CRIED?”
“Yes, cried; not rivers and freshets of woe, but small brooks and streamlets of helpless mortification.”
“What did he do then?”
“Why do you say ‘do’?”
“Oh, I mean ‘say,’ of course. Don’t trifle; go on. What did he say then?”
“There are some things too dreadful to describe,” she answered, and wrapping her Italian blanket majestically about her she retired to her own apartment, shooting one enigmatical glance at me as she closed the door.
That glance puzzled me for some time after she left the room. It was as expressive and interesting a beam as ever darted from a woman’s eye. The combination of elements involved in it, if an abstract thing may be conceived as existing in component parts, was something like this:—
One-half, mystery. One-eighth, triumph. One-eighth, amusement. One-sixteenth, pride. One-sixteenth, shame. One-sixteenth, desire to confess. One-sixteenth, determination to conceal.
And all these delicate, complex emotions played together in a circle of arching eyebrow, curving lip, and tremulous chin,—played together, mingling and melting into one another like fire and snow; bewildering, mystifying, enchanting the beholder!
If Ronald Macdonald did—I am a woman, but, for one, I can hardly blame him!
Chapter XXII. Francesca entertains the green-eyed monster
It rained in torrents; Salemina was darning stockings in the inglenook at Bide-a-Wee Cottage, and I was reading her a Scotch letter which Francesca and I had concocted the evening before. I proposed sending the document to certain chosen spirits in our own country, who were pleased to be facetious concerning our devotion to Scotland. It contained, in sooth, little that was new, and still less that was true, for we were confined to a very small vocabulary which we were obliged to supplement now and then by a dip into Burns and Allan Ramsay.
Here is the letter:—
Bide-a-Wee Cottage, Pettybaw, East Neuk o’ Fife.
To my trusty fieres,
Mony’s the time I hae ettled to send ye a screed, but there was aye something that cam’ i’ the gait. It wisna that I couldna be fashed, for aften hae I thocht o’ ye and my hairt has been wi’ ye mony’s the day. There’s no’ muckle fowk frae Ameriky hereawa; they’re a’ jist Fife bodies, and a lass canna get her tongue roun’ their thrapple-taxin’ words ava’, so it’s like I may een drap a’ the sweetness o’ my good mither-tongue.
‘Tis a dulefu’ nicht, and an awfu’ blash is ragin’ wi’oot. Fanny’s awa’ at the gowff rinnin’ aboot wi’ a bag o’ sticks after a wee bit ba’, and Sally and I are hame by oor lane. Laith will the lassie be to weet her bonny shoon, but lang ere the play’ll be ower she’ll wat her hat aboon. A gust o’ win’ is skirlin’ the noo, and as we luik ower the faem, the haar is risin’, weetin’ the green swaird wi’ misty shoo’rs.
Yestreen was a calm simmer gloamin’, sae sweet an’ bonnie that when the sun was sinkin’ doon ower Pettybaw Sands we daundered ower the muir. As we cam’ through the scented birks, we saw a trottin’ burnie wimplin’ ‘neath the white-blossomed slaes and hirplin’ doon the hillside; an’ while a herd-laddie lilted ower the fernie brae, a cushat cooed leesomely doon i’ the dale. We pit aff oor shoon, sae blithe were we, kilted oor coats a little aboon the knee, and paidilt i’ the burn, gettin’ geyan weet the while. Then Sally pu’d the gowans wat wi’ dew an’ twined her bree wi’ tasselled broom, while I had a wee crackie wi’ Tibby Buchan, the flesher’s dochter frae Auld Reekie. Tibby’s nae giglet gawky like the lave, ye ken,—she’s a sonsie maid, as sweet as ony hinny pear, wi’ her twa pawky een an’ her cockernony snooded up fu’ sleek.
We were unco gleg to win hame when a’ this was dune, an’ after steekin’ the door, to sit an’ birsle oor taes at the bit blaze. Mickle thocht we o’ the gentles ayont the sea, an’ sair grat we for a’ frien’s we kent lang syne in oor ain countree.
Late at nicht, Fanny, the bonny gypsy, cam’ ben the hoose an’ tirled at the pin of oor bigly bower door, speirin’ for baps and bannocks.
“Hoots, lassie!” cried oot Sally, “th’ auld carline i’ the kitchen is i’ her box-bed, an’ weel aneuch ye ken is lang syne cuddled doon.”
“Oo ay!” said Fanny, strikin’ her curly pow, “then fetch me parritch, an’ dinna be lang wi’ them, for I’ve lickit a Pettybaw lad at the gowff, an’ I could eat twa guid jints o’ beef gin I had them!”
“Losh girl,” said I, “gie ower makin’ sic a mickle din. Ye ken verra weel ye’ll get nae parritch the nicht. I’ll rin and fetch ye a ‘piece’ to stap awee the soun’.”
“Blethers an’ havers!” cried Fanny, but she blinkit bonnily the while, an’ when the tea was weel maskit, she smoored her wrath an’ stappit her mooth wi’ a bit o’ oaten cake. We aye keep that i’ the hoose, for th’ auld servant-body is geyan bad at the cookin’, an’ she’s sae dour an’ dowie that to speak but till her we daur hardly mint.
In sic divairsions pass the lang simmer days in braid Scotland, but I canna write mair the nicht, for ‘tis the wee sma’ hours ayont the twal’.
Like th’ auld wife’s parrot, ‘we dinna speak muckle, but we’re deevils to think,’ an’ we’re aye thinkin’ aboot ye. An’ noo I maun leave ye to mak’ what ye can oot o’ this, for I jalouse it’ll pass ye to untaukle the whole hypothec.
Fair fa’ ye a’! Lang may yer lum reek, an’ may prosperity attend oor clan!
Aye your gude frien’, Penelope Hamilton.
“It may be very fine,” remarked Salemina judicially, “though I cannot understand more than half of it.”
“That would also be true of Browning,” I replied. “Don’t you love to see great ideas looming through a mist of words?”
“The words are misty enough in this case,” she said, “and I do wish you would not tell the world that I paddle in the burn, or ‘twine my bree wi’ tasselled broom.’ I’m too old to be made ridiculous.”
“Nobody will believe it,” said Francesca, appearing in the doorway. “They will know it is only Penelope’s havering,” and with this undeserved scoff, she took her mashie and went golfing—not on the links, on this occasion, but in our microscopic sitting-room. It is twelve feet square, and holds a tiny piano, desk, centre-table, sofa, and chairs, but the spot between the fire-place and the table is Francesca’s favourite ‘putting-green.’ She wishes to become more deadly in the matter of approaches, and thinks her tee-shots weak; so these two deficiencies she is trying to make good by home practice in inclement weather. She turns a tumbler on its side on the floor, and ‘putts’ the ball into it, or at it, as the case may be, from the opposite side of the room. It is excellent discipline, and as the tumblers are inexpensive the breakage really does not matter. Whenever Miss Grieve hears the shivering of glass, she murmurs, not without reason, ‘It is not for the knowing what they will be doing next.’