Penelope's Experiences in Scotland. Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith

mam.”

      Then finally, in despair, as she handed me a boiled potato one day, I fixed my searching Yankee brown eyes on her blue-Presbyterian, non-committal ones, and asked, “What is this vegetable, Susanna?”

      In an instant she withdrew herself, her soul, her ego, so utterly that I felt myself gazing at an inscrutable stone image, as she replied, “I cudna say, mam.”

      This was too much! Her mother may have been frightened, very badly frightened, but this was more that I could endure without protest. The plain boiled potato is practically universal. It is not only common to all temperate climates, but it has permeated all classes of society. I am confident that the plain boiled potato has been one of the chief constituents in the building up of that frame in which Susanna Crum conceals her opinions and emotions. I remarked, therefore, as an, apparent afterthought, “Why, it is a potato, is it not, Susanna?”

      What do you think she replied, when thus hunted into a corner, pushed against a wall, driven to the very confines of her personal and national liberty? She subjected the potato to a second careful scrutiny, and answered, “I wudna say it’s no’!”

      Now there is no inherited physical terror in this. It is the concentrated essence of intelligent reserve, caution, and obstinacy; it is a conscious intellectual hedging; it is a dogged and determined attempt to build up barriers of defence between the questioner and the questionee: it must be, therefore, the offspring of the catechism and the heresy trial.

      Once again, after establishing an equally obvious fact, I succeeded in wringing from her the reluctant admission, “It depends,” but she was so shattered by the bulk and force of this outgo, so fearful that in some way she had imperilled her life or reputation, so anxious concerning the effect that her unwilling testimony might have upon unborn generations, that she was of no real service the rest of the day.

      I wish that the Lord Advocate, or some modern counterpart of Braxfield, the hanging judge, would summon Susanna Crum as a witness in an important case. He would need his longest plummet to sound the depths of her consciousness.

      I have had no legal experience, but I can imagine the scene.

      “Is the prisoner your father, Susanna Crum?”

      “I cudna say, my lord.”

      “You have not understood the question, Susanna. Is the prisoner your father?”

      “I cudna say, my lord.”

      “Come, come, my girl! you must answer the questions put you by the court. You have been an inmate of the prisoner’s household since your earliest consciousness. He provided you with food, lodging, and clothing during your infancy and early youth. You have seen him on annual visits to your home, and watched him as he performed the usual parental functions for your younger brothers and sisters. I therefore repeat, is the prisoner your father, Susanna Crum?”

      “I wudna say he’s no’, my lord.”

      “This is really beyond credence! What do you conceive to be the idea involved in the word ‘father,’ Susanna Crum?”

      “It depends, my lord.”

      And this, a few hundred years earlier, would have been the natural and effective moment for the thumbscrews.

      I do not wish to be understood as defending these uncomfortable appliances. They would never have been needed to elicit information from me, for I should have spent my nights inventing matter to confess in the daytime. I feel sure that I should have poured out such floods of confessions and retractations that if all Scotland had been one listening ear it could not have heard my tale. I am only wondering if, in the extracting of testimony from the common mind, the thumbscrew might not have been more necessary with some nations than with others.

      Chapter V. We emulate the Jackdaw

      Invitations had been pouring in upon us since the delivery of our letters of introduction, and it was now the evening of our debut in Edinburgh society. Francesca had volunteered to perform the task of leaving cards, ordering a private victoria for the purpose, and arraying herself in purple and fine linen.

      “Much depends upon the first impression,” she had said. “Miss Hamilton’s ‘party’ may not be gifted, but it is well-dressed. My hope is that some of our future hostesses will be looking from the second-story front-windows. If they are, I can assure them in advance that I shall be a national advertisement.”

      It is needless to remark that as it began to rain heavily as she was leaving the house, she was obliged to send back the open carriage, and order, to save time, one of the public cabs from the stand in the Terrace.

      “Would you mind having the lamiter, being first in line?” asked Susanna of Salemina, who had transmitted the command.

      When Salemina fails to understand anything, the world is kept in complete ignorance.—Least of all would she stoop to ask a humble maidservant to translate the vernacular of the country; so she replied affably, “Certainly, Susanna, that is the kind we always prefer. I suppose it is covered?”

      Francesca did not notice, until her coachman alighted to deliver the first letter and cards, that he had one club foot and one wooden leg; it was then that the full significance of ‘lamiter’ came to her. He was covered, however, as Salemina had supposed, and the occurrence gave us a precious opportunity of chaffing that dungeon of learning. He was tolerably alert and vigorous, too, although he certainly did not impart elegance to a vehicle, and he knew every street in the court end of Edinburgh, and every close and wynd in the Old Town. On this our first meeting with him, he faltered only when Francesca asked him last of all to drive to ‘Kildonan House, Helmsdale’; supposing, not unnaturally, that it was as well known an address as Morningside House, Tipperlinn, whence she had just come. The lamiter had never heard of Kildonan House nor of Helmsdale, and he had driven in the streets of Auld Reekie for thirty years. None of the drivers whom he consulted could supply any information; Susanna Crum cudna say that she had ever heard of it, nor could Mrs. M’Collop, nor could Miss Diggity-Dalgety. It was reserved for Lady Baird to explain that Helmsdale was two hundred and eighty miles north, and that Kildonan House was ten miles from the Helmsdale railway station, so that the poor lamiter would have had a weary drive even had he known the way. The friends who had given us letters to Mr. and Mrs. Jameson-Inglis (Jimmyson-Ingals) must have expected us either to visit John o’ Groats on the northern border, and drop in on Kildonan House en route, or to send our note of introduction by post and await an invitation to pass the summer. At all events, the anecdote proved very pleasing to our Edinburgh acquaintances. I hardly know whether, if they should visit America, they would enjoy tales of their own stupidity as hugely as they did the tales of ours, but they really were very appreciative in this particular, and it is but justice to ourselves to say that we gave them every opportunity for enjoyment.

      But I must go back to our first grand dinner in Scotland. We were dressed at quarter-past seven, when, in looking at the invitation again, we discovered that the dinner-hour was eight o’clock, not seven-thirty. Susanna did not happen to know the exact approximate distance to Fotheringay Crescent, but the maiden Boots affirmed that it was only two minutes’ drive, so we sat down in front of the fire to chat.

      It was Lady Baird’s birthday feast to which we had been bidden, and we had done our best to honour the occasion. We had prepared a large bouquet tied with the Maclean tartan (Lady Baird is a Maclean), and had printed in gold letters on one of the ribbons, ‘Another for Hector,’ the battle-cry of the clan. We each wore a sprig of holly, because it is the badge of the family, while I added a girdle and shoulder-knot of tartan velvet to my pale green gown, and borrowed Francesca’s emerald necklace,—persuading her that she was too young to wear such jewels in the old country.

      Francesca was miserably envious that she had not thought of tartans first. “You may consider yourself ‘geyan fine,’ all covered over with Scotch plaid, but I wouldn’t be so ‘kenspeckle’ for worlds!” she said, using expressions borrowed from Mrs. M’Collop; “and as for disguising your nationality, do not flatter yourself that you look like anything but an American. I forgot to tell you the conversation I overheard in the tram this morning, between a mother and daughter, who were talking about us, I dare say. ‘Have they