Chapter XXV: A Treaty between Nations 255 (2)

Francesca is inflexibly, almost aggressively American, but Salemina is a citizen of the world. If the United States should be involved in a war, I am confident that Salemina would be in front with the other Gatling guns, for in that case a principle would be at stake; but in all lesser matters she is extremely unprejudiced. She prefers German music, Italian climate, French dressmakers, English tailors, Japanese manners, and American--American something,--I have forgotten just what; it is either the ice-cream soda or the form of government,--I can't remember which.

"I wonder why they named it 'Fotheringay' Crescent," mused Francesca. "Some association with Mary Stuart, of course. Poor, poor, pretty lady! A free queen only six years, and think of the number of beds she slept in, and the number of trees she planted; we have already seen, I am afraid to say how many. When did she govern, when did she scheme, above all when did she flirt, with all this racing and chasing over the country? Mrs. M'Collop calls Anne of Denmark a 'sad scattercash' and Mary an 'awfu' gadabout,' and I am inclined to agree with her. By the way, when she was making my bed this morning, she told me that her mother claimed descent from the Stewarts of Appin, whoever they may be. She apologized for Queen Mary's defects as if she were a distant family connection. If so, then the famous Stuart charm has been lost somewhere, for Mrs. M'Collop certainly possesses no alluring curves of temperament."

"I am going to select some distinguished ancestors this very minute, before I go to my first Edinburgh dinner," said I decidedly. "It seems hard that ancestors should have everything to do with settling our nationality and our position in life, and we not have a word to say. How nice it would be to select one's own after one had arrived at years of discretion, or to adopt different ones according to the country one chanced to be visiting! I am going to do it; it is unusual, but there must be a pioneer in every good movement. Let me think: do help me, Salemina! I am a Hamilton to begin with; I might be descended from the logical Sir William himself, and thus become the idol of the university set!"

"He died only about thirty years ago, and you would have to be his daughter: that would never do," said Salemina. "Why don't you take Thomas Hamilton, Earl of Melrose and Haddington? He was Secretary of State, King's Advocate, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and all sorts of fine things. He was the one King James used to call 'Tam o' the Cowgate.'"

"Perfectly delightful! I don't care so much about his other titles, but 'Tam o' the Cowgate' is irresistible. I will take him. He was my--what was he?"

"He was at least your great-great-great-great-grandfather; that is a safe distance. Then there's that famous Jenny Geddes, who flung her fauld-stule at the Dean in St. Giles's,--she was a Hamilton, too, if you fancy her!"

"Yes, I'll take her with pleasure," I responded thankfully. "Of course I don't know why she flung the stool,--it may have been very reprehensible; but there is always good stuff in stool-flingers; it's the sort of spirit one likes to inherit in diluted form. Now whom will you take?"

"I haven't even a peg on which to hang a Scottish ancestor," said Salemina disconsolately.

"Oh, nonsense! think harder. Anybody will do as a starting-point; only you must be honorable and really show relationship, as I did with Jenny and Tam."

"My aunt Mary-Emma married a Lindsay," ventured Salemina hesitatingly.

"That will do," I answered delightedly.

"'The Gordons gay in English blude
They wat their hose and shoon;
The Lindsays flew like fire aboot
Till a' the fray was dune.'

You can play that you are one of the famous 'licht Lindsays,' and you can look up the particular ancestor in your big book. Now, Francesca, it's your turn!"

"I am American to the backbone," she declared, with insufferable dignity. "I do not desire any foreign ancestors."

"Francesca!" I expostulated. "Do you mean to tell me that you can dine with a lineal descendant of Sir Fitzroy Donald Maclean, Baronet, of Duart and Morven, and not make any effort to trace your genealogy back further than your parents?"

"If you goad me to desperation," she answered, "I will wear an American flag in my hair, declare that my father is a Red Indian, or a pork-packer, and talk about the superiority of our checking system and hotels all the evening. I don't want to go, anyway. It is sure to be stiff and ceremonious, and the man who takes me in will ask me the population of Chicago and the amount of wheat we exported last year,--he always does."

"I can't see why he should," said I. "I am sure you don't look as if you knew."

"My looks have thus far proved no protection," she replied sadly. "Salemina is so flexible, and you are so dramatic, that you enter into all these experiences with zest. You already more than half believe in that Tam o' the Cowgate story. But there'll be nothing for me in Edinburgh society; it will be all clergymen"--

"Ministers," interjected Salemina.

--"all ministers and professors. My Redfern gown will be unappreciated, and my Worth evening frocks worse than wasted!"

"There are a few thousand medical students," I said encouragingly, "and all the young advocates, and a sprinkling of military men,--they know Worth frocks."

"And," continued Salemina bitingly, "there will always be, even in an intellectual city like Edinburgh, a few men who continue to escape all the developing influences about them, and remain commonplace, conventional manikins, devoted to dancing and flirting. Never fear, they will find you!"

This sounds harsh, but nobody minds Salemina, least of all Francesca, who well knows she is the apple of that spinster's eye. But at this moment Susanna opens the door (timorously, as if there might be a panther behind it) and announces the cab (in the same tone in which she would announce the beast); we pick up our draperies, and are whirled off by the lamiter to dine with the Scottish nobility.

VI

It was the Princess Dashkoff who said, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, that of all the societies of men of talent she had met with in her travels, Edinburgh's was the first in point of abilities.

One might make the same remark to-day, perhaps, and not depart widely from the truth. One does not find, however, as many noted names as are associated with the annals of the Cape and Poker Clubs or the Crochallan Fencibles, those famous groups of famous men who met for relaxation (and intoxication, I should think) at the old Isle of Man Arms or in Dawney's Tavern in the Anchor Close. These groups included such shining lights as Robert Fergusson the poet, and Adam Ferguson the historian and philosopher, Gavin Wilson, Sir Henry Raeburn, David Hume, Erskine, Lords Newton, Gillies, Monboddo, Hailes, Kames, Henry Mackenzie, and the Ploughman Poet himself, who has kept alive the memory of the Crochallans in many a jovial verse like that in which he describes Smellie, the eccentric philosopher and printer:--

"Shrewd Willie Smellie to Crochallan came,
The old cocked hat, the grey surtout the same,
His bristling beard just rising in its might;
'Twas four long nights and days to shaving night;"

or in the characteristic picture of William Dunbar, a wit of the time, and the merriest of the Fencibles:--

"As I cam by Crochallan
I cannily keekit ben;
Rattlin', roarin' Willie
Was sitting at yon boord en';
Sitting at yon boord en',
And amang guid companie!
Rattlin', roarin' Willie,
Ye're welcome hame to me!"

or in the verses on Creech, Burns's publisher, who left Edinburgh for a time in 1789. The "Willies," by the way, seem to be especially inspiring to the Scottish balladists.

"Oh, Willie was a witty wight,
And had o' things an unco slight!
Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight
And trig and braw;
But now they'll busk her like a fright--
Willie's awa'!"

I think perhaps the gatherings of the present time are neither quite as gay nor quite as brilliant as those of Burns's day, when

"Willie brewed a peck o' maut,
An' Rob an' Allan cam to pree;"

but the ideal standard of those meetings seems to be voiced in the lines:--

"Wha last beside his chair shall fa',
He is the king amang us three!"

As they sit in their chairs nowadays to the very end of the feast, there is doubtless joined with modern sobriety a _soupçon_ of modern dullness and discretion.

To an American the great charm of Edinburgh is its leisurely atmosphere: "not the leisure of a village arising from the deficiency of ideas and motives, but the leisure of a city reposing grandly on tradition and history; which has done its work, and does not require to weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or smelt its own iron."

We were reminded of this more than once, and it never failed to depress us properly. If one had ever lived in Pittsburg, Fall River, or Kansas City, I should think it would be almost impossible to maintain self-respect in a place like Edinburgh, where the citizens "are released from the vulgarizing dominion of the hour." Whenever one of Auld Reekie's great men took this tone with me, I always felt as though I were the germ in a half-hatched egg, and he were an aged and lordly cock gazing at me pityingly through my shell. He, lucky creature, had lived through all the struggles which I was to undergo; he, indeed, was released from "the vulgarizing dominion of the hour;" but I, poor thing, must grow and grow, and keep pecking at my shell, in order to achieve existence.

Sydney Smith says in one of his letters, "Never shall I forget the happy days passed there [in Edinburgh], amidst odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and the most enlightened and cultivated understandings." His only criticism of the conversation of that day (1797-1802) concerned itself with the prevalence of that form of Scotch humor which was called _wut_, and with the disputations and dialectics. We were more fortunate than Sydney Smith, because Edinburgh has outgrown its odious smells, barbarous sounds, and bad suppers, and, wonderful to relate, has kept its excellent hearts and its enlightened and cultivated understandings. As for mingled _wut_ and dialectics, where can one find a better foundation for dinner-table conversation?

The hospitable board itself presents no striking differences from our own, save the customs of serving sweets in soup-plates with dessert-spoons, of a smaller number of forks on parade, of the invariable fish-knife at each plate, of the prevalent "savory" and "cold shape," and the unusual grace and skill with which the hostess carves. Even at very large dinners one occasionally sees a lady of high degree severing the joints of chickens and birds most daintily, while her lord looks on in happy idleness, thinking, perhaps, how greatly times have changed for the better since the ages of strife and bloodshed, when Scottish nobles

"Carved at the meal with gloves of steel,
And drank their wine through helmets barred."

The Scotch butler is not in the least like an English one. No man could be as respectable as he looks, not even an elder of the kirk, whom he resembles closely. He hands your plate as if it were a contribution-box, and in his moments of ease, when he stands behind the "maister," I am always expecting him to pronounce a benediction. The English butler, when he wishes to avoid the appearance of listening to the conversation, gazes with level eye into vacancy; the Scotch butler looks distinctly heavenward, as if he were brooding on the principle of coördinate jurisdiction with mutual subordination. It would be impossible for me to deny the key of the wine-cellar to a being so steeped in sanctity, but it has been done, I am told, in certain rare and isolated cases.

As for toilets, the men dress like all other men (alas, and alas, that we should say it, for we were continually hoping for a kilt!), though there seems to be no survival of the finical Lord Napier's spirit. Perhaps you remember that Lord and Lady Napier arrived at Castlemilk in Lanarkshire with the intention of staying a week, but announced next morning that a circumstance had occurred which rendered it indispensable to return without delay to their seat in Selkirkshire. This was the only explanation given, but it was afterwards discovered that Lord Napier's valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing up a set of neck-cloths which did not correspond _in point of date_ with the shirts they accompanied!

The ladies of the "smart set" in Edinburgh wear French fripperies and _chiffons_, as do their sisters everywhere, but the other women of society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London, Paris, or New York. The sobriety of taste and severity of style that characterize Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's dubieties, to the _haar_, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the presence of three branches of the Presbyterian church among them; the society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds of Presbyterianism at the same time must have its chilly moments.

In Lord Cockburn's time the "dames of high and aristocratic breed" must have been sufficiently awake to feminine frivolities to be both gorgeously and extravagantly arrayed. I do not know in all literature a more delicious and lifelike word-portrait than Lord Cockburn gives of Mrs. Rochead, the Lady of Inverleith, in the Memorials. It is quite worthy to hang beside a Raeburn canvas; one can scarce say more.

"Except Mrs. Siddons in some of her displays of magnificent royalty, nobody could sit down like the Lady of Inverleith. She would sail like a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk, done up in all the accompaniments of fans, ear-rings and finger-rings, falling sleeves, scent-bottle, embroidered bag, hoop, and train; managing all this seemingly heavy rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan does its plumage. She would take possession of the centre of a large sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion, cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeming to lay themselves over it, like summer waves. The descent from her carriage, too, where she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a display which no one in these days could accomplish or even fancy. The mulberry-colored coach, apparently not too large for what it contained, though she alone was in it; the handsome, jolly coachman and his splendid hammer-cloth loaded with lace; the two respectful liveried footmen, one on each side of the richly carpeted step,--these were lost sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the Lady of Inverleith came down and touched the earth."

My right-hand neighbor at Lady Baird's dinner was surprised at my quoting Lord Cockburn. One's attendant squires here always seem surprised when one knows anything; but they are always delighted, too, so that the amazement is less trying. True, I had read the Memorials only the week before, and had never heard of them previous to that time; but that detail, according to my theories, makes no real difference. The woman who knows how and when to "read up," who reads because she wants to be in sympathy with a new environment; the woman who has wit and perspective enough to be stimulated by novel conditions and kindled by fresh influences, who is susceptible to the vibrations of other people's history, is safe to be fairly intelligent and extremely agreeable, if only she is sufficiently modest. I think my neighbor found me thoroughly delightful after he discovered my point of view. He was an earl; and it always takes an earl a certain length of time to understand me. I scarcely know why, for I certainly should not think it courteous to interpose any real barriers between the nobility and that portion of the "masses" represented in my humble person.

It seemed to me at first that the earl did not apply himself to the study of my national peculiarities with much assiduity, but wasted considerable time in gazing at Francesca, who was opposite. She is certainly very handsome, and I never saw her lovelier than at that dinner; her eyes were like stars, and her cheeks and lips a splendid crimson, for she was quarreling with her attendant cavalier about the relative merits of Scotland and America, and they apparently ceased to speak to each other after the salad.

When the earl had sufficiently piqued me by his devotion to his dinner and his glances at Francesca, I began a systematic attempt to achieve his (transient) subjugation. Of course I am ardently attached to Willie Beresford and prefer him to any earl in Britain, but one's self-respect demands something in the way of food. I could see Salemina at the far end of the table radiant with success, the W. S. at her side bending ever and anon to catch the (artificial) pearls of thought that dropped from her lips. "Miss Hamilton appears simple" (I thought I heard her say); "but in reality she is as deep as the Currie Brig!" Now where did she get that allusion? And again, when the W. S. asked her whither she was going when she left Edinburgh, "I hardly know," she replied pensively. "I am waiting for the shade of Montrose to direct me, as the Viscount Dundee said to your Duke of Gordon." The entranced Scotsman little knew that she had perfected this style of conversation by long experience with the Q. C.'s of England. Talk about my being as deep as the Currie Brig (whatever it may be); Salemina is deeper than the Atlantic Ocean! I shall take pains to inform her Writer to the Signet, after dinner, that she eats sugar on her porridge every morning; that will show him her nationality conclusively.

The earl took the greatest interest in my new ancestors, and approved thoroughly of my choice. He thinks I must have been named for Lady Penelope Belhaven, who lived in Leven Lodge, one of the country villas of the Earls of Leven, from whom he himself is descended. "Does that make us relatives?" I asked. "Relatives, most assuredly," he replied, "but not too near to destroy the charm of friendship."

He thought it a great deal nicer to select one's own forbears than to allow them all the responsibility, and said it would save a world of trouble if the method could be universally adopted. He added that he should be glad to part with a good many of his, but doubted whether I would accept them, as they were "rather a scratch lot." (I use his own language, which I thought delightfully easy for a belted earl.) He was charmed with the story of Francesca and the lamiter, and offered to drive me to Kildonan House, Helmsdale, on the first fine day. I told him he was quite safe in making the proposition, for we had already had the fine day, and we understood that the climate had exhausted itself and retired for the season.

The gentleman on my right, a distinguished Dean of the Thistle, gave me a few moments' discomfort by telling me that the old custom of "rounds" of toasts still prevailed at Lady Baird's on formal occasions, and that before the ladies retired every one would be called upon for appropriate "sentiments."

"What sort of sentiments?" I inquired, quite overcome with terror.

"Oh, epigrammatic sentences expressive of moral feelings or virtues," replied my neighbor easily. "They are not quite as formal and hackneyed now as they were in the olden time, when some of the favorite toasts were 'May the pleasure of the evening bear the reflections of the morning!' 'May the friends of our youth be the companions of our old age!' 'May the honest heart never feel distress!' 'May the hand of charity wipe the eye of sorrow!'"

"I can never do it in the world!" I ejaculated. "Oh, one ought never, never to leave one's own country! A light-minded and cynical English gentleman told me that I should frequently be called upon to read hymns and recite verses of Scripture at family dinners in Edinburgh and I hope I am always prepared to do that; but nobody warned me that I should have to evolve epigrammatic sentiments on the spur of the moment."

My confusion was so evident that the good dean relented and confessed that he was imposing upon my ignorance. He made me laugh heartily at the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly. He was called upon in his turn, at a large party, and having nothing to aid him in an exercise to which he was new save the example of his predecessors, lifted his glass after much writhing and groaning and gave, "The reflection of the moon in the cawm bosom of the lake!"

At this moment Lady Baird glanced at me, and we all rose to go into the drawing-room; but on the way from my chair to the door, whither the earl escorted me, he said gallantly, "I suppose the men in your country do not take champagne at dinner? I cannot fancy their craving it when dining beside an American woman!"

That was charming, though he did pay my country a compliment at my expense. One likes, of course, to have the type recognized as fine; at the same time his remark would have been more flattering if it had been less sweeping.

When I remember that he offered me his ancestors, asked me to drive two hundred and eighty miles, and likened me to champagne, I feel that, with my heart already occupied and my hand promised, I could hardly have accomplished more in the course of a single dinner-hour.

VII

Francesca's experiences were not so fortunate; indeed, I have never seen her more out of sorts than she was during our long chat over the fire, after our return to Breadalbane Terrace.

"How did you get on with your delightful minister?" inquired Salemina of the young lady, as she flung her unoffending wrap over the back of a chair. "He was quite the handsomest man in the room; who is he?"

"He is the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable, condescending, ill-tempered prig I ever met!"

"Why, Francesca!" I exclaimed. "Lady Baird speaks of him as her favorite nephew, and says he is full of charm."

"He is just as full of charm as he was when I met him," returned the girl nonchalantly; "that is, he parted with none of it this evening. He was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and oh! so Scotch! I believe if one punctured him with a hat-pin, oatmeal would fly into the air!"

"Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the immeasurable advantages of our sleeping-car system, the superiority of our fast-running elevators, and the height of our buildings?" observed Salemina.

"I mentioned them," Francesca answered evasively.

"You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate?"

"Oh, I alluded to it; but only when he said that our hot summers must be insufferable."

"I suppose you repeated the remark you made at luncheon, that the ladies you had seen in Princes Street were excessively plain?"

"Yes, I did!" she replied hotly; "but that was because he said that American girls generally looked bloodless and frail. He asked if it were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Wasn't that unendurable? I answered that those were the chief solid articles of food, but that after their complexions were established, so to speak, their parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the diet."

"What did he say to that?" I asked.

"Oh, he said, 'Quite so, quite so;' that was his invariable response to all my witticisms. Then when I told him casually that the shops looked very small and dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as many tartans and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked that as to the latter point, the American season had not opened yet! Presently he asserted that no royal city in Europe could boast ten centuries of such glorious and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said it did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no idea of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a Goethe, Boston without its twang!"

"Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. "He never could have said 'twang' unless you had tried him beyond measure!"

"I dare say I did; he is easily tried," returned Francesca. "I asked him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in Boston. 'No,' he said, 'it is not necessary to _go_ there! And while we are discussing these matters,' he went on, 'how is your American dyspepsia these days,--have you decided what is the cause of it?'

"'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash; 'we have always taken in more foreigners than we could assimilate!' I wanted to tell him that one Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere, but I restrained myself."

"I am glad you did restrain yourself--once," exclaimed Salemina. "What a tactful person the Reverend Ronald must be, if you have reported him faithfully! Why didn't you give him up, and turn to your other neighbor?"

"I did, as soon as I could with courtesy; but the man on my left was the type that always haunts me at dinners; if the hostess hasn't one on her visiting-list, she imports one for the occasion. He asked me at once of what material the Brooklyn Bridge is made. I told him I really didn't know. Why should I? I seldom go over it. Then he asked me whether it was a suspension bridge or a cantilever. Of course I didn't know; I am not an engineer."

"You are so tactlessly, needlessly candid," I expostulated. "Why didn't you say boldly that the Brooklyn Bridge is a wooden cantilever, with gutta-percha braces? He didn't know, or he wouldn't have asked you. He couldn't find out until he reached home, and you would never have seen him again; and if you had, and he had taunted you, you could have laughed vivaciously and said you were chaffing. That is my method, and it is the only way to preserve life in a foreign country. Even my earl, who did not thirst for information (fortunately), asked me the population of the Yellowstone Park, and I simply told him three hundred thousand, at a venture."

"That would never have satisfied my neighbor," said Francesca. "Finding me in such a lamentable state of ignorance, he explained the principle of his own stupid Forth Bridge to me. When I said I understood perfectly, just to get into shallower water, where we wouldn't need any bridge, the Reverend Ronald joined in the conversation, and asked me to repeat the explanation to him. Naturally I couldn't, and he knew that I couldn't when he asked me, so the bridge man (I don't know his name, and don't care to know it) drew a diagram of the national idol on his dinner-card and gave a dull and elaborate lecture upon it. Here is the card, and now that three hours have intervened I cannot tell which way to turn the drawing so as to make the bridge right side up; if there is anything puzzling in the world, it is these architectural plans and diagrams. I am going to pin it to the wall and ask the Reverend Ronald which way it goes."

"Do you mean that he will call upon us?" we cried in concert.

"He asked if he might come and continue our 'stimulating' conversation, and as Lady Baird was standing by I could hardly say no. I am sure of one thing: that before I finish with him I will widen his horizon so that he will be able to see something beside Scotland and his little insignificant Fifeshire parish! I told him our country parishes in America were ten times as large as his. He said he had heard that they covered a good deal of territory, and that the ministers' salaries were sometimes paid in pork and potatoes. That shows you the style of his retorts!"

"I really cannot decide which of you was the more disagreeable," said Salemina; "if he calls, I shall not remain in the room."

"I wouldn't gratify him by staying out," retorted Francesca. "He is extremely good for the circulation; I think I was never so warm in my life as when I talked with him; as physical exercise he is equal to bicycling. The bridge man is coming to call, too. I gave him a diagram of Breadalbane Terrace, and a plan of the hall and staircase, on my dinner-card. He was distinctly ungrateful; in fact, he remarked that he had been born in this very house, but would not trust himself to find his way upstairs with my plan as a guide. He also said the American vocabulary was vastly amusing, so picturesque, unstudied, and fresh."

"That was nice, surely," I interpolated.

"You know perfectly well that it was an insult."

"Francesca is very like the young man," laughed Salemina, "who, whenever he engaged in controversy, seemed to take off his flesh and sit in his nerves."

"I'm not supersensitive," replied Francesca, "but when one's vocabulary is called picturesque by a Britisher, one always knows he is thinking of cowboys and broncos. However, I shifted the weight into the other scale by answering, 'Thank you. And your phraseology is just as unusual to us.' 'Indeed?' he said with some surprise. 'I supposed our method of expression very sedate and uneventful.' 'Not at all,' I returned, 'when you say, as you did a moment ago, that you never eat potato to your fish.' 'But I do not,' he urged obtusely. 'Very likely,' I argued, 'but the fact is not of so much importance as the preposition. Now I eat potato _with_ my fish.' 'You make a mistake,' he said, and we both laughed in spite of ourselves, while he murmured, 'eating potato _with_ fish,--how extraordinary.' Well, the bridge man may not add perceptibly to the gayety of the nations, but he is better than the Reverend Ronald. I forgot to say that when I chanced to be speaking of doughnuts, that 'unconquer'd Scot' asked me if a doughnut resembled a peanut! Can you conceive such ignorance?"

"I think you were not only aggressively American, but painfully provincial," said Salemina, with some warmth. "Why in the world should you drag doughnuts into a dinner-table conversation in Edinburgh? Why not select topics of universal interest?"

"Like the Currie Brig or the shade of Montrose," I murmured slyly.

"To one who has ever eaten a doughnut, the subject is of transcendent interest; and as for one who has not--well, he should be made to feel his limitations," replied Francesca, with a yawn. "Come, let us forget our troubles in sleep; it is after midnight."

About half an hour later she came to my bedside, her dark hair hanging over her white gown, her eyes still bright.

"Penelope," she said softly, "I did not dare tell Salemina, and I should not confess it to you save that I am afraid Lady Baird will complain of me; but I was dreadfully rude to the Reverend Ronald! I couldn't help it; he roused my worst passions. It all began with his saying he thought international marriages presented even more difficulties to the imagination than the other kind. _I_ hadn't said anything about marriages nor thought anything about marriages of any sort, but I told him _instantly_ I considered that every international marriage involved two national suicides. He said that he shouldn't have put it quite so forcibly, but that he hadn't given much thought to the subject. I said that _I_ had, and I thought we had gone on long enough filling the coffers of the British nobility with American gold."

"_Frances!_" I interrupted. "Don't tell me that you made that vulgar, cheap newspaper assertion!"

"I did," she replied stoutly, "and at the moment I only wished I could make it stronger. If there had been anything cheaper or more vulgar, I should have said it, but of course there isn't. Then he remarked that the British nobility merited and needed all the support it could get in these hard times, and asked if we had not cherished some intention in the States, lately, of bestowing it in greenbacks instead of gold! I threw all manners to the winds after that and told him that there were no husbands in the world like American men, and that foreigners never seemed to have any proper consideration for women. Now, were my remarks any worse than his, after all, and what shall I do about it, anyway?"

"You should go to bed first," I murmured sleepily; "and if you ever have an opportunity to make amends, which I doubt, you should devote yourself to showing the Reverend Ronald the breadth of your own horizon instead of trying so hard to broaden his. As you are extremely pretty, you may possibly succeed; man is human, and I dare say in a month you will be advising him to love somebody more worthy than yourself. (He could easily do it!) Now don't kiss me again, for I am displeased with you; I hate international bickering!"

"So do I," agreed Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, "and there is no spectacle so abhorrent to every sense as a narrow-minded man who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is awfully good-looking,--I will say that for him; and if you don't explain me to Lady Baird, I will write to Mr. Beresford about the earl. There was no bickering there; it was looking at you two that made us think of international marriages."

"It must have suggested to you that speech about filling the coffers of the British nobility," I replied sarcastically, "inasmuch as the earl has twenty thousand pounds a year, probably, and I could barely buy two gold hairpins to pin on the coronet. There, do go away and leave me in peace!"

"Good-night again, then," she said, as she rose reluctantly from the foot of the bed. "I doubt if I can sleep for thinking what a pity it is that such an egotistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular, bigoted person should be so handsome! And who wants to marry him, anyway, that he should be so distressed about international alliances? One would think that all female America was sighing to lead him to the altar!"

VIII

Two or three days ago we noted an unusual though subdued air of excitement at 22, Breadalbane Terrace, where for a week we had been the sole lodgers. Mrs. Menzies, whom we call Mingess, has returned to Kilconquhar, which she calls Kinyukkar; Miss Cockburn-Sinclair has purchased her wedding outfit and gone back to Inverness, where she will be greeted as Coburn-Sinkler; the Hepburn-Sciennes will be leaving to-morrow, just as we have learned to pronounce their names; and the sound of the scrubbing-brush is heard in the land. In corners where all was clean and spotless before, Mrs. M'Collop is digging with the broom, and the maiden Boots is following her with a damp cloth. The stair carpets are hanging on lines in the back garden, and Susanna, with her cap rakishly on one side, is always to be seen polishing the stair rods. Whenever we traverse the halls we are obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washing-day repasts in suburban America.

"Is it spring house-cleaning?" I ask Mistress M'Collop.

"Na, na," she replies hurriedly; "it's the meenisters."

On the 19th of May we are a maiden castle no longer. Black coats and hats ring at the bell, and pass in and out of the different apartments. The hall table is sprinkled with letters, visiting-cards, and programmes which seem to have had the alphabet shaken out upon them, for they bear the names of professors, doctors, reverends, and very reverends, and fairly bristle with A. M.'s, M. A.'s, A. B.'s, D. D.'s, and LL. D.'s. The voice of family prayer is lifted up from the dining-room floor, and Paraphrases and hymns float down the stairs from above. Their Graces the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive to-day at Holyrood Palace, there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and to-morrow the Royal Standard will be hoisted at Edinburgh Castle from reveille to retreat. His Grace will hold a levee at eleven. Directly His Grace leaves the palace after the levee, the guard of honor will proceed by the Canongate to receive him on his arrival at St. Giles' Church, and will then proceed to Assembly Hall to receive him on his arrival there. The Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons and the First Battalion Royal Scots will be in attendance, and there will be unicorns, carricks, pursuivants, heralds, mace-bearers, ushers, and pages, together with the Purse-bearer, and the Lyon King-of-Arms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute; for the palace has awakened and is "mimicking its past."

"_Should the weather be wet the troops will be cloaked at the discretion of the commanding officers._" They print this instruction as a matter of form, and of course every man has his mackintosh ready. The only hope lies in the fact that this is a national function, and "Queen's weather" is a possibility. The one personage for whom the Scottish climate will occasionally relax is Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who for sixty years has exerted a benign influence on British skies and at least secured sunshine on great parade days. Such women are all too few!

In this wise enters His Grace the Lord High Commissioner to open the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and on the same day there arrives by the railway (but traveling first class) the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Free, to convene its separate Supreme Courts in Edinburgh. He will have no Union Jacks, Royal Standards, Dragoons, bands, or pipers; he will bear his own purse and stay at a hotel; but when the final procession of all comes, he will probably march beside His Grace the Lord High Commissioner, and they will talk together, not of dead-and-gone kingdoms, but of the one at hand, where there are no more divisions in the ranks, and where all the soldiers are simply "king's men," marching to victory under the inspiration of a common watchword.

It is a matter of regret to us that the U. P.'s, the third branch of Scottish Presbyterianism, could not be holding an Assembly during this same week, so that we might the more easily decide in which flock we really belong. 22, Breadalbane Terrace now represents all shades of religious opinion within the bounds of Presbyterianism. We have an Elder, a Professor of Biblical Criticism, a Majesty's Chaplain, and even an ex-Moderator under our roof, and they are equally divided between the Free and the Established bodies.

Mrs. M'Collop herself is a pillar of the Free Kirk, but she has no prejudice in lodgers, and says so long as she "mak's her rent she doesna care aboot their releegious principles." Miss Diggity-Dalgety is the sole representative of United Presbyterianism in the household, and she is somewhat gloomy in Assembly time. To belong to a dissenting body, and yet to cook early and late for the purpose of fattening one's religious rivals, is doubtless trying to the temper; and then she asserts that "meenisters are aye tume [empty]."

* * * * *

"You must put away your Scottish ballads and histories now, Salemina, and keep your Concordance and your umbrella constantly at hand."

This I said as we stood on George IV. Bridge and saw the ministers glooming down from the Mound in a dense Assembly fog. As the presence of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to the population of Edinburgh is believed to induce rain,--or perhaps I should say, more rain.

Of course, when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily resist the infection of disease. Similarly if Scottish skies were not ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as stated to the Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head at the time; and she went on to boast of a convention she once attended in San Francisco, where twenty-six thousand Christian Endeavorers were unable to dim the California sunshine, though they stayed ten days.

"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued to Salemina, "is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of proper Presbyterianism. Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part if we should each espouse a different kind; then there would be no feeling among our Edinburgh friends. And again, what is this 'union' of which we hear murmurs? Is it religious or political? Is it an echo of the 1707 Union you explained to us last week, or is it a new one? What is Disestablishment? What is Disruption? Are they the same thing? What is the Sustentation Fund? What was the Non-Intrusion Party? What was the Dundas Despotism? What is the argument at present going on about taking the Shorter Catechism out of the schools? What is the Shorter Catechism, anyway,--or at least, what have they left out of the Longer Catechism to make it shorter,--and is the length of the Catechism one of the points of difference? Then when we have looked up Chalmers and Candlish, we can ask the ex-Moderator and the Professor of Biblical Criticism to tea; separately, of course, lest there should be ecclesiastical quarrels."

Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established Church, I lean instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have any knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly established national church,--or, for that matter, a regularly established anything,--she gravitates to it by the law of her being. Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own minister and native land, are inclined to be flexible. The church that enters Edinburgh with a marquis and a marchioness representing the Crown, the church that opens its Assembly with splendid processions and dignified pageants, the church that dispenses generous hospitality from Holyrood Palace,--above all, the church that escorts its Lord High Commissioner from place to place with bands and pipers,--that is the church to which she pledges her constant presence and enthusiastic support.

As for me, I believe I am a born protestant, or "come-outer," as they used to call dissenters in the early days of New England. I have not yet had time to study the question, but as I lack all knowledge of the other two branches of Presbyterianism, I am enabled to say unhesitatingly that I belong to the Free Kirk. To begin with, the very word "free" has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin, that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from the stained-glass window above the pulpit looked reddish gold; the Southern heat of passionate conviction that colored his slow Northern speech; the remoteness of his personality; the weariness of his deep-set eyes, that bespoke such fastings and vigils as he probably never practiced,--all this led to our choice of the name.

As we walked toward St. Andrew's Church and Tanfield Hall, where he insisted on taking me to get the "proper historical background," he told me about the great Disruption movement. He was extremely eloquent,--so eloquent that the image of Willie Beresford tottered continually on its throne, and I found not the slightest difficulty in giving an unswerving allegiance to the principles presented by such an orator.

We went first to St. Andrew's, where the General Assembly met in 1843, and where the famous exodus of the Free Protesting Church took place,--one of the most important events in the modern history of the United Kingdom.

The movement was promoted by the great Dr. Chalmers and his party, mainly to abolish the patronage of livings, then in the hands of certain heritors or patrons, who might appoint any minister they wished, without consulting the congregation. Needless to say, as a free-born American citizen, and never having had a heritor in the family, my blood easily boiled at the recital of such tyranny. In 1834 the Church had passed a law of its own, it seems, ordaining that no presentee to a parish should be admitted, if opposed by the majority of the male communicants. That would have been well enough could the State have been made to agree, though I should have gone further, personally, and allowed the female communicants to have some voice in the matter.

The Friar took me into a particularly chilly historic corner, and, leaning against a damp stone pillar, painted the scene in St. Andrew's when the Assembly met in the presence of a great body of spectators, while a vast throng gathered without, breathlessly awaiting the result. No one believed that any large number of ministers would relinquish livings and stipends and cast their bread upon the waters for what many thought a "fantastic principle." Yet when the Moderator left his place, after reading a formal protest signed by one hundred and twenty ministers and seventy-two elders, he was followed first by Dr. Chalmers, and then by four hundred and seventy men, who marched in a body to Tanfield Hall, where they formed themselves into the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an hour later, he exclaimed, "Thank God for Scotland! There is not another country on earth where such a deed could be done!" And the Friar reminded me proudly of Macaulay's saying that the Scots had made sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion for which there was no parallel in the annals of England. On the next Sunday after these remarkable scenes in Edinburgh there were heart-breaking farewells, so the Friar said, in many village parishes, when the minister, in dismissing his congregation, told them that he had ceased to belong to the Established Church and would neither preach nor pray in that pulpit again; that he had joined the Free Protesting Church of Scotland, and, God willing, would speak the next Sabbath morning at the manse door to as many as cared to follow him. "What affecting leave-takings there must have been!" the Friar exclaimed. "When my grandfather left his church that May morning, only fifteen members remained behind, and he could hear the more courageous say to the timid ones, 'Tak' your Bible an' come awa' mon!' Was not all this a splendid testimony to the power of principle and the sacred demands of conscience?" I said "Yea" most heartily, for the spirit of Jenny Geddes stirred within me that morning, and under the spell of the Friar's kindling eye and eloquent voice I positively gloried in the valiant achievements of the Free Church. It would always be easier for a woman to say "Yea" than "Nay" to the Friar. When he left me in Breadalbane Terrace I was at heart a member of his congregation in good (and irregular) standing, ready to teach in his Sunday-school, sing in his choir, visit his aged and sick poor, and especially to stand between him and a too admiring feminine constituency.

When I entered the drawing-room, I found that Salemina had just enjoyed an hour's conversation with the ex-Moderator of the opposite church wing.

"Oh, my dear," she sighed, "you have missed such a treat! You have no conception of these Scottish ministers of the Establishment,--such culture, such courtliness of manner, such scholarship, such spirituality, such wise benignity of opinion! I asked the doctor to explain the Disruption movement to me, and he was most interesting and lucid, and most affecting, too, when he described the misunderstandings and misconceptions that the Church suffered in those terrible days of 1843, when its very life-blood, as well as its integrity and unity, was threatened by the foes in its own household; when breaches of faith and trust occurred on all sides, and dissents and disloyalties shook it to its very foundation! You see, Penelope, I have never fully understood the disagreements about heritors and livings and state control before, but here is the whole matter in a nut-sh--"

"My dear Salemina," I interposed, with dignity, "you will pardon me, I am sure, when I tell you that any discussion on this point would be intensely painful to me, as I now belong to the Free Kirk."

"Where have you been this morning?" she asked, with a piercing glance.

"To St. Andrew's and Tanfield Hall."

"With whom?"

"With the Friar."

"I see! Happy the missionary to whom you incline your ear, _first_!"--which I thought rather inconsistent of Salemina, as she had been converted by precisely the same methods and in precisely the same length of time as had I, the only difference being in the ages of our respective missionaries, one being about five and thirty, the other five and sixty. Even this is to my credit after all, for if one can be persuaded so quickly and fully by a young and comparatively inexperienced man, it shows that one must be extremely susceptible to spiritual influences or--something.

IX

Religion in Edinburgh is a theory, a convention, a fashion (both humble and aristocratic), a sensation, an intellectual conviction, an emotion, a dissipation, a sweet habit of the blood; in fact, it is, it seems to me, every sort of thing it can be to the human spirit.

When we had finished our church toilettes, and came into the drawing-room, on the first Sunday morning, I remember that we found Francesca at the window.

"There is a battle, murder, or sudden death going on in the square below," she said. "I am going to ask Susanna to ask Mrs. M'Collop what it means. Never have I seen such a crowd moving peacefully, with no excitement or confusion, in one direction. Where can the people be going? Do you suppose it is a fire? Why, I believe ... it cannot be possible ... yes, they certainly are disappearing in that big church on the corner; and millions, simply millions and trillions, are coming in the other direction,--toward St. Knox's."

Impressive as was this morning church-going, a still greater surprise awaited us at seven o'clock in the evening, when the crowd blocked the streets on two sides of a church near Breadalbane Terrace; and though it was quite ten minutes before service when we entered, Salemina and I only secured the last two seats in the aisle, and Francesca was obliged to sit on the steps of the pulpit or seek a sermon elsewhere.

It amused me greatly to see Francesca sitting on pulpit steps, her Paris gown and smart toque in close juxtaposition to the rusty bonnet and bombazine dress of a respectable elderly tradeswoman. The church officer entered first, bearing the great Bible and hymn-book, which he reverently placed on the pulpit cushions; and close behind him, to our entire astonishment, came the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, evidently exchanging with the regular minister of the parish, whom we had come especially to hear. I pitied Francesca's confusion and embarrassment, but I was too far from her to offer an exchange of seats, and through the long service she sat there at the feet of her foe, so near that she could have touched the hem of his gown as he knelt devoutly for his first silent prayer.

Perhaps she was thinking of her last interview with him, when she descanted at length on that superfluity of naughtiness and Biblical pedantry which, she asserted, made Scottish ministers preach from out-of-the-way texts.