When we awoke next morning the sun had forgotten itself and was shining in at Mrs. M'Collop's back windows.
We should have arisen at once to burn sacrifices and offer oblations, but we had seen the sun frequently in America, and had no idea (poor fools!) that it was anything to be grateful for, so we accepted it, almost without comment, as one of the perennial providences of life.
When I speak of Edinburgh sunshine I do not mean, of course, any such burning, whole-souled, ardent warmth of beam as one finds in countries where they make a specialty of climate. It is, generally speaking, a half-hearted, uncertain ray, as pale and transitory as a martyr's smile; but its faintest gleam, or its most puerile attempt to gleam, is admired and recorded by its well-disciplined constituency. Not only that, but at the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman remarks smilingly, `I think now we shall be having settled weather!' It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but quite groundless, and leads one to believe in the story that when Father Noah refused to take Sandy into the ark, he sat down philosophically outside, saying, with a glance at the clouds, `Aweel! the day's just aboot the ord'nar', an' I wouldna won'er if we saw the sun afore nicht!'
But what loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to the sombre beauty of that old grey town of the North? `Grey! why, it is grey or grey and gold, or grey and gold and blue, or grey and gold and blue and green, or grey and gold and blue and green and purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground!
But take it when it is most sombrely grey, where is another such grey city?'
So says one of her lovers, and so the great army of lovers would say, had they the same gift of language; for `Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, . . .
Yea, an imperial city that might hold Five time a hundred noble towns in fee. . . .
Thus should her towers be raised; with vicinage Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets, As if to indicate, `mid choicest seats Of Art, abiding Nature's majesty.'
We ate a hasty breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps the most pleasurable sensation in the world. Francesca was ready first, and, having mentioned the fact several times ostentatiously, she went into the drawing-room to wait and read the Scotsman. When we went thither a few minutes later we found that she had disappeared.
"She is below, of course," said Salemina. "She fancies that we shall feel more ashamed at our tardiness if we find her sitting on the hall bench in silent martyrdom."
There was no one in the hall, however, save Susanna, who inquired if we would see the cook before going out.
"We have no time now, Susanna," I remarked. "We are anxious to have a walk before the weather changes, if possible, but we shall be out for luncheon and in for dinner, and Mrs. M'Collop may give us anything she pleases. Do you know where Miss Francesca is?"
"I cudna s---"
"Certainly, of course you couldn't; but I wonder if Mrs. M'Collop saw her?"
Mrs. M'Collop appeared from the basement, and vouchsafed the information that she had seen `the young leddy rinnin' after the regiment.'
"Running after the regiment!" repeated Salemina automatically.
"What a reversal of the laws of nature? Why, in Berlin, it was always the regiment that used to run after her!"
We learned in what direction the soldiers had gone, and pursuing the same path found the young lady on the corner of a street near by.
She was quite unabashed. "You don't know what you have missed!" she said excitedly. "Let us get into this tram, and possibly we can head them off somewhere. They may be going into battle, and if so, my heart's blood is at their service. It is one of those experiences that come only once in a lifetime. There were pipes and there were kilts! (I didn't suppose they ever really wore them outside of the theatre!) When you have seen the kilts swinging, Salemina, you will never be the same woman afterwards! You never expected to see the Olympian gods walking, did you? Perhaps you thought they always sat on practicable rocks and made stiff gestures, from the elbow, as they do in the Wagner operas? Well, these gods walked, if you can call the inspired gait a walk! If there is a single spinster left in Scotland, it is because none of these ever asked her to marry him. Ah, how grateful I ought to be that I am free to say `yes', if a kilt ever asks me to be his! Poor Penelope, yoked to your commonplace trousered Beresford! (I wish the tram would go faster!) You must capture one of them, by fair means or foul, Penelope, and Salemina and I will hold him down while you paint him,--there they are, they are there somewhere, don't you hear them?"
There they were indeed, filing down the grassy slopes of the Gardens, swinging across one of the stone bridges, and winding up the Castlehill to the Esplanade like a long glittering snake; the streamers of their Highland bonnets waving, their arms glistening in the sun, and the bagpipes playing `The March of the Cameron Men.'
The pipers themselves were mercifully hidden from us on that first occasion, and it was well, for we could never have borne another feather's weight of ecstasy.
It was in Princes Street that we had alighted,--named thus for the prince who afterwards became George IV.--and I hope he was, and is, properly grateful. It ought never to be called a street, this most magnificent of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that interdict of the Court of Session in 1774 which prevented the Gradgrinds of the day from erecting buildings along its south side,--a sordid scheme that would have been the very superfluity of naughtiness.
