Nan Sherwood's Summer Holidays Part 22

CHAPTER XXI

WELCOME, La.s.sIES, TO SCOTLAND

Dr. Beulah's question went unanswered. The clank of the chain as deckhands dropped the gang-plank from s.h.i.+p to sh.o.r.e attracted the attention of the girls even as she asked it. Now they moved forward slowly, with the rest of the pa.s.sengers.

"We're almost there! We're almost there!" Bess could hardly contain herself. "Now we are getting nearer and nearer and nearer. One more step. Two more steps. We made it!" she exclaimed triumphantly as she stepped her foot on the gangplank and carefully walked its length. Nan was at her heels. Then one by one the others disentangled themselves from the crowded deck and joined those on sh.o.r.e, until they all stood together, "like a group of lost baffled children," Dr. Prescott said, as she joined them and herded them through a door and into a long shed-like station.

There, everything seemed in confusion. "It's like the Grand Central Station in New York and the dock where we boarded the s.h.i.+p all rolled into one," Laura whispered into Nan's ear.

"Yes, only you don't see kilted highlanders and bagpipes and English officers in either of those places," Nan returned, waving and smiling across the top of somebody's bags to Hetty, who had attracted her attention from the distance.

"Welcome, la.s.sies, to Scotland." A voice from behind them caused them to turn and there was Jeanie. "Ha' ye learned your way aboot yet?" she grinned at her American friends.

"We're no so guid as that." Nan recalled as best she could her own mother's Scotch dialect, but let it go again as she called after Jeanie, "Remember, it's tea in London during coronation week."

"Aye, and I'll not be forgettin'," Jeanie flung over her shoulder before she was lost in the crowd of English, Irish and Scotch people.

"Porter, porter, porter." "Taxi, taxi." "Car for Royal Scott Hotel." The calls were all around them in more variations of the English tongue than they ever knew existed.

"Here, girls, this way," Dr. Prescott beckoned them to follow her.

"Here's the baggage."

Bess turned and followed her. Rhoda, Amelia, Grace, and Laura were already at her side. Nan started too, but a small child, tears streaming down its face, halted her.

She stooped down, pulled its grimy fists out of its eyes, pushed its blond hair back, and comforted, "There, child, there. Don't cry. What has happened?"

"I didna ken." The child cried harder than ever.

"Are you lost?"

"I didna ken," the answer was the same, but he grabbed hold of her coat and pulled her along after him.

She glanced back toward her friends, but could catch no one's attention.

She stopped. The small force below her tugged hard at her coat.

"Ye canna stop noo." He was a persistent little Scotsman.

"No, I canna," Nan thought to herself and followed, wondering what it was all about. He led her past the baggage, the train, and a small window where men were busy changing American dollars to English pounds.

They pa.s.sed lunch carts, magazine racks, and an information tower. Once Nan stopped, but the little urchin's eyes filled so quickly with tears that she gave up completely and resolved to find out what was wrong.

Finally, they came to a high iron fence through the gates of which no one could go without a pa.s.sport or permit. The small boy s.h.i.+ed away from this public entrance, followed the fence around to its joining with the wall. There, stuffed between fence and concrete floor, was a bagpipe almost as big as the child himself. He stooped over and tugged at it. It wouldn't budge.

Nan knelt down and tugged, too. Between the two of them, after much twisting and turning, pus.h.i.+ng and pulling, the bagpipe was pulled through. The child swung a strap over his shoulder, looked up at her brightly now, and with a "thank ye, thank ye" ran along ahead of her playing "On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond."

She saw him once again before she left the station. It was just before the train pulled out. He stood beneath her compartment window and played the same tune again. This time tourists were throwing pennies and ha'pennies at his feet and he was smiling broadly.

He waved up at Nan and called, "Noo ane for ye." She laughed and nodded, as he swung into the tune a third time. At the end, Nan tossed him a coin. He fingered it carefully, his Scotch thrift fighting with his feeling of grat.i.tude, but finally the better man won and he threw it back up to her.

The sound of his playing was still in her ears as the train pulled out for Emberon. Though she could not have known it then, the single tune that he knew was to be a kind of theme song playing itself most unexpectedly through her Emberon experience.

The ride from Glasgow, Great Britain's second largest city, to Emberon, a small village on the coast of one of Scotland's many fjords took only a few hours.

"It was a short ride," Nan wrote later to her mother, "from Glasgow to Emberon, but such fun! The trains were queer, like those you see sometimes in the movie with a corridor the whole length of each car. The pa.s.sengers all sit in little compartments that have two seats facing one another. We all sat together, of course. Laura, Bess, and Dr. Beulah were on one side and Grace, Rhoda, Amelia, and myself on the other. When we ate, as we did soon after we were outside the city, the steward pulled a little table down between us so that we were really quite snug and cozy.

"It was nice, eating Scotch broth (and how good it was!) while a Scotch landscape unwound itself at your side. I say this now, but, really, we were so excited that we hardly knew at all what was happening. Oh, mother, we are seeing so many strange new things all the time that my tongue can hardly keep up with my eyes! When I get home I'm going to talk and talk and talk until you feel as though you had taken the trip yourself, but then you and Papa know all about it, because you were here not long ago.

"You'd be surprised how many people I meet who remember you. The old coachman who met us at the station, the people in the village, oh, everyone here, tells me what a nice mother and father I have, until sometimes I grow very lonesome to see you. I got your cable at Glasgow.

I am being very careful, truly, and I will write you all about everything when I get to Edinburgh where I am hoping there will be some letters from you. Until then--

My love, Nan."

"Until then"--the words were simple, but how much was to happen "until then."

Nan had been told what Emberon was like and had told her friends, but even then it came as a surprise. She had known that it was a gray and dreary looking place high up on a hill some distance from the village, but how dreary she never could have imagined.

It was dusk when they drove up the steep rough road that was the only entrance to the ancient estate. The high old-fas.h.i.+oned carriage that they had climbed up into at the station rocked precariously from side to side as the horses, almost as ancient as the carriage itself, pulled it along.

In the half light, the girls looked at one another and at Dr. Beulah.

"It's almost spooky," Grace huddled closer to Laura as she spoke, "isn't it?"

"These old estates," Dr. Beulah explained, "were almost all fortresses at one time. They are built high up on hills so that they have a natural means of defense against the surrounding country. The original owners were lords who were almost kings in their own right. They fought, now against one another, now against England, holding princes and princesses, kings and queens as p.a.w.ns. No man knew for sure who was his friend and who his enemy.

"The stakes were high in those days. Each man thought that Scotland was his for the fighting. So, when he got himself some land and built himself his castle, he went out to conquer the surrounding country. It was fight, fight, fight all the time, one Scottish clan against another.

"Then it was Scotland against England and the Scottish world was full of spies. That very song the lad back in the station played over and over again 'On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond,' is the story of a Scotsman who was captured by the English. The lake itself is not very far from here."

"I believe," she went on, as she saw that she had the attention of all the girls, "that the hero of that song belonged to one of the Highland clans and was captured by the English at the battle of Culloden. He was taken to Carlisle where he was tried for treason and condemned to be executed.

"But as a special favor," she paused and waited while the carriage went around a sharp bend in the road, and then continued, "the night before his execution, he was allowed to receive a visit from his betrothed. In bidding her goodby--and she is supposed to have been a very beautiful Scotch girl--his heart turned homeward to the scenes of other, happy days. He told her that his spirit would be there before she arrived, that he would meet her at their former trysting place."

"We'll meet where we parted in yon shady glen, By the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond."

Nan was humming the words over to herself even as the carriage came to a stop before the gates of the ancient estate. The driver climbed down from his high seat in front and pulled a rope. A bell rang in the distance, the gates opened, and now, almost proudly, the horses pulled the carriage up a short driveway and stopped. A proud dignified old gentleman came out to greet them.

CHAPTER XXII

EMBERON

"Welcome, thrice welcome to Emberon," he greeted. "And you, my dear," he continued as they walked in through big doors to a high old hall, "you, I'm sure, are Nancy Sherwood." His voice was soft and low as he spoke to her. He placed his hand on her head. "A Blake through and through," he went on, smiling down at her surprise at his instant recognition.