Penelope's Progress Part 20

"_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, amus.e.m.e.nt.

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!

XXII

"'O has he chosen a bonny bride, An' has he clean forgotten me?'

An' sighing said that gay ladye, 'I would I were in my ain countrie!'"

_Lord Beichan_.

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 doc.u.ment 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 la.s.s 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 awful blash is ragin' wi'oot. f.a.n.n.y'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 la.s.sie be to weet her bonny shoon, but lang ere the play'll be o'er, 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 while 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 crooed 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' gey an' weet the while. Then Sally pu'd the gowans wat wi' dew an' twined her bree wi' ta.s.seled 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 c.o.c.kernony snooded up fu' sleek.

We were unco gleg to win hame when a' this was dune, an' after steekin' the door, to sit an' taist oor taes at the bit blaze. Mickle thocht we o' the gentles ayont the sea an' sair grat we for a' frien's we knew lang syne in oor ain countree.

Late at nicht, f.a.n.n.y, the bonny gypsy, cam' ben the hoose an' tirled at the pin of oor bigly bower door, speirin' for baps and bannocks.

"Hoots, la.s.sie!" 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 f.a.n.n.y, straikin' her curly pow, "then fetch me parritch an' dinna be lang wi' 'em, for I've lickit a Pettybaw la.s.s at the gowff, an' I could eat twa guid jints o' beef gin I had 'em!"

"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 an' fetch ye a 'piece'

to stap awee the soun'."

"Blathers an' havers!" cried f.a.n.n.y, 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 gey an' bad at the cookin' an' she's sae dour an' dowie that to speak but till her we daur hardly mint.

In sic divairsions pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 loom 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' ta.s.seled broom.' I'm too old to be made ridiculous."

"n.o.body 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 mas.h.i.+e 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 fireplace and the table is Francesca's favorite "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 "puts" 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 s.h.i.+vering of gla.s.s, she murmurs, not without reason, "It is not for the knowing what they will be doing next."

"Penelope, has it ever occurred to you that Elizabeth Ardmore is seriously interested in Mr. Macdonald?"

Salemina propounded this question to me with the same innocence that a babe would display in placing a match beside a dynamite bomb.

Francesca naturally heard the remark,--although it was addressed to me,--p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, and missed the tumbler by several feet.

It was a simple inquiry, but as I look back upon it from the safe ground of subsequent knowledge I perceive that it had a certain amount of influence upon Francesca's history. The suggestion would have carried no weight with me for two reasons. In the first place, Salemina is far-sighted. If objects are located at some distance from her, she sees them clearly; but if they are under her very nose she overlooks them altogether, unless they are sufficiently fragrant or audible to address other senses. This physical peculiarity she carries over into her mental processes. Her impression of the Disruption movement, for example, would be lively and distinct, but her perception of a contemporary lovers' quarrel (particularly if it were fought at her own ap.r.o.n-strings) would be singularly vague. If she suggested, therefore, that Elizabeth Ardmore was interested in Mr.

Beresford, who is the rightful captive of my bow and spear, I should be perfectly calm.

My second reason for comfortable indifference is that, frequently in novels, and always in plays, the heroine is instigated to violent jealousy by insinuations of this sort, usually conveyed by the villain of the piece, male or female. I have seen this happen so often in the modern drama that it has long since ceased to be convincing; but though Francesca has witnessed scores of plays and read hundreds of novels, it did not apparently strike her as a theatrical or literary suggestion that Lady Ardmore's daughter should be in love with Mr.

Macdonald. The effect of the new point of view was most salutary, on the whole. She had come to think herself the only prominent figure in the Reverend Ronald's landscape, and anything more impertinent than her tone with him (unless it is his with her) I certainly never heard.

This criticism, however, relates only to their public performances, and I have long suspected that their private conversations are of a kindlier character. When it occurred to her that he might simply be sharpening his mental sword on her steel, but that his heart had at last wandered into a more genial climate than she had ever provided for it, she softened unconsciously; the Scotsman and the American receded into a truer perspective, and the man and the woman approached each other with dangerous nearness.