CONCERNING BESOMS.

It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house. When the sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart, and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes. This erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie. No man compelled to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or other people; and if it come to pa.s.s that he holds cheap views of life, and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged for him at the Great a.s.size. Small wonder that he comes to regard the world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit dwelling-place all his years. When a prophet cometh from the Eternal to speak unto modern times as Dante did unto the Middle Ages, and constructs the other world before our eyes, he will have one circle in his h.e.l.l for the builders of rotten houses, and doubtless it will be a collection of their own works, so that their sin will be its punishment, as is most fitting and the way of things.

Surely there will also be some corner of heaven kept for the man who, having received a charge to build the sh.e.l.l wherein two people were to make a home, laid its foundations deep and raised strong walls that nothing but gunpowder could rend in pieces, and roofed it over with oaken timber and lined it with the same, so that many generations might live therein in peace and honour. Such a house was the Lodge in those days, although at last beginning to show signs of decay, and it somehow stirred up the heroic spirit of the former time within a man to sit before the big fire in the hall, with grim Carnegies looking down from the walls and daring you to do any meanness, while the light blazing out from a log was flung back from a sword that had been drawn in the '15. One was unconsciously reinforced in the secret place of his manhood, and inwardly convinced that what concerneth every man is not whether he fail or succeed, but that he do his duty according to the light which may have been given him until he die. It was also a regeneration of the soul to awake in a room of the eastern tower, where the Carnegies' guests slept, and fling up the window, with its small square panes, to fill one's lungs with the snell northern air, and look down on the woods glistening in every leaf, and the silver Tochty just touched by the full risen sun. Miracles have been wrought in that tower, for it happened once that an Edinburgh advocate came to stay at the Lodge, who spake after a quite marvellous fashion, known neither in England nor Scotland; and being himself of pure bourgeois blood, the fifth son of a factor, felt it necessary to despise his land, from its kirk downwards, and had a collection of j.a.pes at Scottish ways, which in his provincial simplicity he offered to the Carnegies. It seemed to him certain that people of Jacobite blood and many travels would have relished his clever talk, for it is not given to a national decadent to understand either the people he has deserted or the ancient houses at whose door he stands. Carnegie was the dullest man living in the matter of sneering, and Kate took an instant dislike to the mincing little man, whom she ever afterwards called the Popinjay, and so handled him with her tongue that his superiority was mightily shaken.

But there was good stuff in the advocate, besides some brains, and after a week's living in the Lodge, he forgot to wear his eye-gla.s.s, and let his r's out of captivity, and attempted to make love to Kate, which foolishness that masterful damsel brought to speedy confusion.

It was also said that when he went back to the Parliament House, every one could understand what he said, and that he got two briefs in one week, which shows how good it is to live in an ancient house with honest people.

"Is there a ghost, dad?" They were sitting before the fire in the hall after dinner--Kate in her favourite posture, leaning forward and nursing her knee. The veterans and I thought that she always looked at her best so, with her fine eyes fixed on the fire, and the light bringing her face into relief against the shadow. We saw her feet then--one lifted a little from the ground--and V. C. declared they were the smallest you could find for a woman of her size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kate in her favourite position.]

"She knows it, too," he used to say, "for when a woman has big feet she always keeps them tucked in below her gown. A woman with an eight-size glove and feet to correspond is usually a paragon of modesty, and strong on women's rights."

"Kate's glove is number six, and I think it's a size too big," broke in the Colonel--we were all lying in the sun on a bank below the beeches at the time, and the Colonel was understood to be preparing a sermon for some meeting--"but it's a strong little hand, and a steady; she used to be able to strike a shilling in the air at revolver practice."

"Ghost, la.s.sie. Oh, in the Lodge, a Carnegie ghost--not one I've ever heard of; so you may sleep in peace, and I 'm below if you feel lonely the first night."

"You are most insulting; one would think I were a milksop. I was hoping for a ghost--a white lady by choice. Did no Carnegie murder his wife, for instance, through jealousy or quarrelling?"

"The Carnegies have never quarrelled," said the General, with much simplicity; "you see the men have generally been away fighting, and the women had never time to weary of them."

"No woman ever wearies of a man unless he be a fool and gives in to her--then she grows sick of him. Life might be wholesome, but it would have no smack; it would be like meat without mustard. If a man cannot rule, he ought not to marry, for his wife will play the fool in some fashion or other like a runaway horse, and he has half the blame. Why did he take the box-seat?" and Kate nodded to the fire. "What are you laughing at?"

"Perhaps I ought to be shocked, but the thought of any one trying to rule you, Kit, tickles me immensely. I have had the reins since you were a bairn, and you have been a handful. You were a 'smatchit' at six years old, and a 'trimmie' at twelve, and you are qualifying for the highest rank in your cla.s.s."

"What may that be, pray? it seems to me that the Scottish tongue is a perfect treasure-house for impertinent people. How Scots must congratulate themselves that they need never be at a loss when they are angry or even simply frank."

"If it comes to downright swearing, you must go to Gaelic," said the General, branching off. "Donald used to be quite contemptuous of any slight efforts at profanity in the barrack yard, although they sickened me. 'Toots, Colonel; ye do not need to be troubling yourself with such poor little words, for they are just nothing at all, and yet the bodies will be saying them over and over again like parrots. Now a Lochaber man could hef been saying what he wa.s.s wanting for fifteen minutes, and nefer hef used the same word twice, unless he had been forgetting his Gaelic. It's a peautiful language, the Gaelic, when you will not be fery well pleased with a man.'"

"That is very good, dad, but I think we were speaking in Scotch, and you have not told me that nice complimentary t.i.tle I am living to deserve. Is 'cutty' the disreputable word? for I think I 've pa.s.sed that rank already; it sounds quite familiar."

"No, it's a far more fetching word than 'cutty,' or even than 'randy'

(scold), which you may have heard."

"I have," replied Kate instantly, "more than once, and especially after I had a difference in opinion with Lieutenant Strange. You called me one or two names then, dad---in fact you were quite eloquent; but you know that he was a bad fellow, and that the regiment was well rid of him; but I 'm older now, and I have not heard my promotion."

"It's the most vigorous word that Scots have for a particular kind of woman."

"Describe her," demanded Kate.

"One who has a mind of her own," began the General, carefully, "and a way, too, who is not easily cowed or managed, who is not . . ."

"A fool," suggested Kate.

"Who is not conspicuously soft in manner," pursued the General, with discretion, "who might even have a temper."

"Not a tame rabbit, in fact. I understand what you are driving at, and I know what a model must feel when she is being painted. And now kindly pluck up courage and name the picture." And Kate leant back, with her hand behind her head, challenging the General--if he dared.

"Well?"

"Besom." And he was not at all ashamed, for a Scot never uses this word without a ring of fondness and admiration in his voice, as of one who gives the world to understand that he quite disapproves of this audacious woman, wife or daughter of his, but is proud of her all the time. It is indeed a necessity of his nature for a Scot to have husks of reproach containing kernels of compliment, so that he may let out his heart and yet preserve his character as an austere person, dest.i.tute of vanity and sentiment.

"Accept your servant's thanks, my General. I am highly honoured." And Kate made a sweeping courtesy, whereupon they both laughed merrily; and a log blazing up suddenly made an old Carnegie smile who had taken the field for Queen Mary, and was the very man to have delighted in a besom.

"When I was here in June"--and the General stretched himself in a deep red leather chair--"I stood a while one evening watching a fair-haired, blue-eyed little maid who was making a daisy chain and singing to herself in a garden. Her mother came out from the cottage, and, since she did not see me, devoured the child with eyes of love. Then something came into her mind--perhaps that the good man would soon be home for supper; she rushed forward and seized the child, as if it had been caught in some act of mischief. 'Come into the hoose, this meenut, ye little beesom, an' say yir carritches. What's the chief end o' man?'"

"Could she have been so accomplished at that age?" Kate inquired, with interest. "Are you sure about the term of endearment? Was the child visibly flattered?"

"She caught my eye as they pa.s.sed in, and flung me a smile like one excusing her mother's fondness. But Davidson hears better things, for as soon as he appears the younger members of a family are taken from their porridge and set to their devotions.

"'What are ye glowerin' at there, ye little cutty? Toom (empty) yir mooth this meenut and say the twenty-third Psalm to the minister.'"

"Life seems full of incident, and the women make the play. What about the men? Are they merely a chorus?"

"A stranger spending a week in one of our farm-houses would be ready to give evidence in a court of justice that he had never seen women so domineering or men so submissive as in Drumtochty.

"And why? Because the housewife who sits in church as if b.u.t.ter would n't melt in her mouth speaks with much fluency and vigour at home, and the man says nothing. His normal state is doing wrong and being scolded from morning till night--for going out without his breakfast, for not cleaning his boots when he comes in, for spoiling chairs by sitting on them with wet clothes, for spilling his tea on the tablecloth, for going away to market with a dusty coat, for visiting the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors, for saying things he ought n't when he does speak--till the long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation, 'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's little better than a threshing-mill.' His confusion, however, is neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a round of the farm in good heart, once or twice saying 'Sall' in a way that shows a lively recollection of his wife's gifts."

"Then the men love to be ruled," began Kate, with some contempt; "it does not give me a higher idea of the district."

"Wait a moment, young woman, for all that goes for nothing except to show that the men allow the women to be supreme in one sphere."

"In the dairy, I suppose?"

"Perhaps; and a very pleasant kingdom, too, as I remember it, when a hot, thirsty, tired laddie, who had been fishing or ferreting, was taken into the cool, moist, darkened place, and saw a dish of milk creamed for his benefit by some sonsy housewife. Sandie and I used to think her omnipotent, and heard her put the gude man through his facings with awe, but by-and-by we noticed that her power had limits.

When the matter had to do with anything serious, sowing or reaping or kirk or market, his word was law.

"He said little, but it was final, and she never contradicted; it was rare to hear a man call his wife by name; it was usually 'gude wife,'

and she always referred to him as the 'maister.' And without any exception, these silent, reserved men were 'maister;' they had a look of authority."

"They gave way in trifles, to rule in a crisis, which is just my idea of masculine government," expatiated Kate. "A woman likes to say what she pleases and have her will in little things; she has her way, and if a man corrects her because she is inaccurate, and nags at her when she does anything he does not approve, then he is very foolish and very trying, and if she is not quite a saint, she will make him suffer.

"Do you remember Dr. Pettigrew, that prim little effigy of a man, and his delightful Irish wife, and how conversation used to run when he was within hearing?"

"Glad to have a tasting, Kit," and the General lay back in expectation.

"'Oi remember him, as foine an upstanding young officer as ye would wish to see, six feet in his boots.'

"'About five feet ten, I believe, was his exact height, my dear.'

"'Maybe he was n't full grown then, but he was a good-looking man, and as pretty a rider as ever sat on a horse. Well, he was a Warwickshire man . . .'

"'Bucks, he said himself.'

"'He was maybe born in both counties for all you know.'

"'Alethea,' with a cough and reproving look.

"'At any rate Oi saw him riding in a steeplechase in the spring of '67, at Aldershot.'