Penelope's Progress Part 14

_The Gentle Shepherd_.

That is what Peggy says to Jenny in Allan Ramsay's poem, and if you subst.i.tute "Crummylowe" for "Habbie's Howe" in the first line, you will have a lovely picture of the Farm-Steadin'.

You come to it by turning the corner from the inn, first pa.s.sing the cottage where the lady wishes to rent two rooms for fifteen s.h.i.+llings a week, but will not give much attendance, as she is slightly asthmatic, and the house is always as clean as it is this minute, and the view from the window looking out on Pettybaw Bay canna be surpa.s.sed at ony money. Then comes the little house where Will'am Beattie's sister Mary died in May, and there wasna a bonnier woman in Fife. Next is the cottage with the pansy garden, where the lady in the widow's cap takes five o'clock tea in the bay window, and a snug little supper at eight. She has for the first scones and marmalade, and her tea is in a small black teapot under a red cozy with a white muslin cover drawn over it. At eight she has more tea, and generally a kippered herring, or a bit of cold mutton left from the noon dinner.

We note the changes in her bill of fare as we pa.s.s hastily by and feel admitted quite into the family secrets. Beyond this bay window, which is so redolent of simple peace and comfort that we long to go in and sit down, is the cottage with the double white tulips, the cottage with the collie on the front steps, the doctor's house with the yellow laburnum tree, and then the house where the Disagreeable Woman lives.

She has a lovely baby, which, to begin with, is somewhat remarkable, as disagreeable women rarely have babies; or else, having had them, rapidly lose their disagreeableness,--so rapidly that one has not time to notice it. The Disagreeable Woman's house is at the end of the row, and across the road is a wicket gate leading--Where did it lead?--that was the very point. Along the left, as you lean wistfully over the gate, there runs a stone wall topped by a green hedge; and on the right, first furrows of pale fawn, then below, furrows of deeper brown, and mulberry, and red ploughed earth stretching down to waving fields of green, and thence to the sea, gray, misty, opalescent, melting into the pearly white clouds, so that one cannot tell where sea ends and sky begins.

There is a path between the green hedge and the ploughed field, and it leads seductively to the farm-steadin'; or we felt that it might thus lead, if we dared unlatch the wicket gate. Seeing no sign "Private Way," "Trespa.s.sers Not Allowed," or other printed defiance to the stranger, we were considering the opening of the gate, when we observed two female figures coming toward us along the path, and paused until they should come through. It was the Disagreeable Woman (though we knew it not) and an elderly friend. We accosted the friend, feeling instinctively that she was framed of softer stuff, and asked her if the path were a private one. It was a question that had never met her ear before, and she was too dull or too discreet to deal with it on the instant. To our amazement, she did not even manage to falter, "I couldna say."

"Is the path private?" I repeated.

"It is certainly the idea to keep it a little private," said the Disagreeable Woman, coming into the conversation without being addressed. "Where do you wish to go?"

"Nowhere in particular. The walk looks so inviting we should like to see the end."

"It goes only to the Farm, and you can reach that by the highroad; it is only a half-mile farther. Do you wish to call at the Farm?"

"No, oh no; the path is so very pretty that"--

"Yes, I see; well, I should call it rather private." And with this she departed; leaving us to stand on the outskirts of paradise, while she went into her house and stared at us from the window as she played with the lovely undeserved baby. But that was not the end of the matter.

We found ourselves there next day, Francesca and I,--Salemina was too proud,--drawn by an insatiable longing to view the beloved and forbidden scene. We did not dare to glance at the Disagreeable Woman's windows, lest our courage should ooze away, so we opened the gate and stole through into the rather private path.

It was a most lovely path; even if it had not been in a sense prohibited, it would still have been lovely, simply on its own merits.

There were little gaps in the hedge and the wall, through which we peered into a daisy-starred pasture, where a white bossy and a herd of flaxen-haired cows fed on the sweet green gra.s.s. The mellow ploughed earth on the right hand stretched down to the sh.o.r.e-line, and a plough-boy walked up and down the long, straight furrows whistling "My Nannie's awa'." Pettybaw is so far removed from the music-halls that their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its Sylvan shades, and the herd-laddies and plough-boys still sweeten their labors with the old cla.s.sic melodies.

We walked on and on, determined to come every day; and we settled that if we were accosted by any one, or if our innocent business were demanded, Francesca should ask, "Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live here, and has she any new-laid eggs?"

Soon the gates of the Farm appeared in sight. There was a cl.u.s.ter of buildings, with doves huddling and cooing on the red-tiled roofs,--dairy-houses, workmen's cottages, comely rows of haystacks (towering yellow things with peaked tops); a little pond with ducks and geese chattering together as they paddled about, and for additional music the trickling of two tiny burns making "a singan din"

as they wimpled through the bushes. A speckle-breasted thrush perched on a corner of the gray wall and poured his heart out. Overhead there was a chorus of rooks in the tall trees, but there was no sound of human voice save that of the plough-laddie whistling "My Nannie's awa'."

We turned our backs on this darling solitude, and retraced our steps lingeringly. As we neared the wicket gate again we stood upon a bit of jutting rock and peered over the wall, sniffing the hawthorn buds with ecstasy. The white bossy drew closer, treading softly on its daisy carpet; the wondering cows looked up at us as they peacefully chewed their cuds; a man in corduroy breeches came from a corner of the pasture, and with a sharp, narrow hoe rooted out a thistle or two that had found their way into this sweet feeding-ground. Suddenly we heard the swish of a dress behind us, and turned, conscience-stricken, though we had in nothing sinned.

"Does Mrs. Macstronachlacher live here?" stammered Francesca like a parrot.

It was an idiotic time and place for the question. We had certainly arranged that she should ask it, but something must be left to the judgment in such cases. Francesca was hanging over a stone wall regarding a herd of cows in a pasture, and there was no possible shelter for a Mrs. Macstronachlacher within a quarter of a mile. What made the remark more unfortunate was the fact that, though she had on a different dress and bonnet, the person interrogated was the Disagreeable Woman; but Francesca is particularly slow in discerning resemblances. She would have gone on mechanically asking for new-laid eggs, had I not caught her eye and held it sternly. The foe looked at us suspiciously for a moment (Francesca's hats are not easily forgotten), and then vanished up the path, to tell the people at Crummylowe, I suppose, that their grounds were infested by marauding strangers whose curiosity was manifestly the outgrowth of a republican government.

As she disappeared in one direction, we walked slowly in the other; and just as we reached the corner of the pasture where two stone walls meet, and where a group of oaks gives grateful shade, we heard children's voices.

"No, no!" cried somebody: "it must be still higher at this end, for the tower,--this is where the king will sit. Help me with this heavy one, Rafe. Dandie, mind your foot. Why don't you be making the flag for the s.h.i.+p?--and do keep the Wrig away from us till we finish building!"

XVII

"O lang, lang may the ladyes sit Wi' their face into their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand."

_Sir Patrick Spens._

We forced our toes into the crevices of the wall and peeped stealthily over the top. Two boys of eight or ten years, with two younger children, were busily engaged in building a castle. A great pile of stones had been hauled to the spot, evidently for the purpose of mending the wall, and these were serving as rich material for sport.

The oldest of the company, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy in an Eton jacket and broad white collar, was obviously commander-in-chief; and the next in size, whom he called Rafe, was a laddie of eight, in kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy, while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little yokels of another sort. The miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was worthy of the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower, the master builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over the wall. We were properly abashed and ducked our heads discreetly at once, but were rea.s.sured by hearing him run rapidly toward us, calling, "Stop, if you please! Have you anything on just now,--are you busy?"

We answered that we were quite at leisure.

"Then would you mind coming in to help us to play 'Sir Patrick Spens'?

There aren't enough of us to do it nicely."

This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least misplaced. Playing "Sir Patrick Spens" was exactly in our line, little as he suspected it.

"Come and help?" I said. "Simply delighted! Do come, f.a.n.n.y dear. How can we get over the wall?"

"I'll show you the good broken place!" cried Sir Apple-Cheek; and following his directions we scrambled through, while Rafe took off his Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth.

"Hurrah! now it will be something like fun! Do you know 'Sir Patrick Spens'?"

"Every word of it. Don't you want us to pa.s.s an examination before you allow us in the game?"

"No," he answered gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the 'eldern knight,'--you remember him?"

"Certainly; he sat at the king's right knee."

"Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time, and I the other part, because everybody likes to be him; but there's n.o.body left for the 'lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is the only maiden to sit on the sh.o.r.e, and she always forgets to comb her hair and weep at the right time."

The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest) was seated on the gra.s.s, with her fat hands full of pink thyme and white wild woodruff. The sun shone on her curly flaxen head. She wore a dark blue cotton frock with white dots, and a short-sleeved pinafore; and though she was utterly useless from a dramatic point of view, she was the sweetest little Scotch dumpling I ever looked upon. She had been tried and found wanting in most of the princ.i.p.al parts of the ballad, but when left out of the performance altogether she was wont to scream so l.u.s.tily that all Crummylowe rushed to her a.s.sistance.

"Now let us practice a bit to see if we know what we are going to do,"

said Sir Apple-Cheek. "Rafe, you can be Sir Patrick this time. The reason why we all like to be Sir Patrick," he explained, turning to me, "is that the lords o' Noroway say to him,--

'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's gowd, And a' our Queenis fee;'

and then he answers,--

'Ye lee! ye lee! ye leers loud, Fu' loudly do ye lee!'

and a lot of splendid things like that. Well, I'll be the king," and accordingly he began:--

"The King sits in Dunfermline tower, Drinking the bluid-red wine.

'O whaur will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new s.h.i.+p o' mine?'"

A dead silence ensued, whereupon the king said testily, "Now, Dandie, you never remember you're the eldern knight; go on!"

Thus reminded, Dandie recited:--

"O up and spake an eldern knight Sat at the King's right knee, 'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever sailed the sea.'"

"Now I'll write my letter," said the king, who was endeavoring to make himself comfortable in his somewhat contracted tower.