CHAPTER XVIII

ST. GILES’S FAIR

There was a great gathering of townspeople and country people in the old town of Oxford. “What can be going on?” exclaimed Miss Cavendish, who, with her girls, was turning the corner by old St. Michael’s Church. She stopped to question a gaping countryman, who looked at her open-mouthed. What benighted being was this who could be upon the spot and not know about St. Giles’s Fair? But he gathered sufficient pity and understanding to tell them what they wanted to know.

“We must ask Mrs. Birch about it when we get back from market,” said Sidney. This attending to their own marketing was a great frolic, and one which added zest to their appetites when meal-time came. The market offered fresh country vegetables and fruit and was an attractive little place to the three who had come to regard bacon and eggs as a dish to be avoided when possible. Here they could select according to the taste of each and were always very content. Having completed this duty, they went back to their lodgings to give their orders and to gain information.

“Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am,” said their landlady. “I’ll do the mushrooms for your luncheons, and ’ow would you like your heggs, miss?”

“They’d be good scrambled, wouldn’t they?” suggested Sidney.

“You may scramble them, Mrs. Birch,” said Miss Cavendish. But the good woman looked mystified; she had never ’eard of scrambled heggs. “Stirred eggs,” suggested Miss Cavendish. But this method seemed no more familiar to Mrs. Birch than the other, there were further explanations and at last a gleam of intelligence flashed from Mrs. Birch’s eye. “Hit’s buttered heggs you mean, miss, thank you, miss.” And thereafter buttered eggs became a part of their bill of fare.

St. Giles’s Fair, they were told, was not what it had been; it was a noisy, foolish performance which Mrs. Birch doubted if the ladies would care to see, but if they should like a glimpse of it the evening would be the liveliest. Therefore they bided their time till night should fall, and meanwhile they occupied themselves with the treasures of the Bodleian Library, peeped in at Tom Quad, took a hasty view of the ivied walls of Pembroke and other colleges which they would examine more closely later on.

“I almost hate to leave our comfortable sitting-room,” said Sidney with a regretful look at the lighted lamp and the open piano. “I have been in no such homelike place since I left America.”

“We’ll have our homelike places all back again soon enough,” replied Gabriella, “but we shall not be able to see St. Giles’s Fair.”

Therefore they started out and elbowed their way through a throng of jostling men and women who had come a-fairing, and soon they found themselves in the very centre of the excitement. Side shows were everywhere, calliopes, street pianos, brazen horns, fairly deafened them; and the vendors of nostrums and novelties crying their wares added to the Babel of noise. For the rest, be it said, it was a quiet crowd. There was little boisterous merriment, no loud-voiced, piercing, nasal conversation. Indeed, it was ludicrously “unnoisy,” Gabriella said. “The English have a silent way of taking things, anyhow,” she remarked. “If a man gets angry with his wife, and chucks her out of the house, he growls something in an undertone, you hear a dull thud and that is all. One day in London I happened to hear two men who were having an altercation; you could see by their set faces that they were simply boiling mad inside, but all that I heard in the very lowest pitched, contemptuous tones was ‘You are a wehm,’ from one man, and the other one said in quite the same manner: ‘If I am a wehm, you are a loathsome wehm,’ and that was all of it; vituperation could go no further than to call a man a loathsome worm. Oh, do look, Gem.”

Miss Cavendish turned her head to see a quartette of girls with long wands in their hands; the wands were tipped with something fuzzy with which they touched the faces of such chance young man as took their fancy, and the swain returned the attention by flinging a handful of flour upon the damsel. In some cases when the little wand was too persistently used the young woman was caught and kissed, though, unlike an American girl upon such a provocation, she neither struggled nor shrieked, neither did she laugh loudly. Her friends might giggle softly, but the whole performance was so matter-of-fact, there was such a spirit of imperturbability evidenced that Sidney and Gabriella were amused beyond measure.

“It is the very funniest thing we have seen,” Sidney declared. “Imagine such a scene at one of our county fairs. Picture one of our American girls under similar circumstances and fancy her shrill laughter, her high-pitched protestations and all the rest of it. All the noise upon this occasion is made by those very unmusical instruments, and those clap-trappers.”

A short survey of the fair served them, and they returned to their lodgings, caring little for merry-go-rounds, Punch and Judy shows, jugglers and charlatans.

“I am afraid I am fickle,” announced Gabriella as they entered the cosey apartment. “I am beginning to feel myself false to Italy because I am realizing the delights of clean English lodgings. Fancy being able always to live in a beautiful old historic English town with green meadows and winding streams at your very door, and of having the comforts of home with no bother of servants; of being able to do your own marketing and of feeling sure that your food will be served and cooked perfectly and your rooms kept in exquisite order by a soft-voiced, respectable woman who never is supercilious nor condescending, but who, on the contrary, is humbly delighted that you favor her house with your presence. It is such an entirely new sensation that I am wondering if it isn’t the very idealest existence of any.”

“Shall you take out naturalization papers to-morrow?” asked Sidney.

“Not quite so soon; I haven’t seen Scotland yet.”

“Nor Wales.”

A vivid blush overspread Gabriella’s cheek. “Please spare a trembling maid,” she begged. “Have pity upon my condition of uncertainty and dread.”

Sidney laughed and picked up her shining brass candlestick, remarking that she had letters to write.

Oxford was left behind with reluctance. It was tantalizing not to be able to wander down Addison’s walk more than once, not to become more than half familiar with “the noblest old street in England,” nor to linger more leisurely in the sweet gardens and the dignified college halls. Yet, with passage taken for a settled sailing, time was pressing and there was still much which they felt they could not leave out of their trip. Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon held them for two or three days, then, as they journeyed on from Lincoln to York and Durham, their enthusiasm waxed warmer and warmer as the cathedral towns led them from glory to glory.

“I don’t believe either of the others can be finer than Lincoln,” declared Gabriella. “I have made my choice and nothing will budge me. Where will you find anything as beautiful as that Angel Choir, where anything as grotesque as that dear little imp? Where shall we see such a wonderful vaulting as that which springs from that single shaft in the Chapter House? And surely nothing can rival its site at the top of that mighty hill overlooking the Witham. I may appear obstinate to you after this, but Lincoln has my heart and I shall not give it to either York or Durham.”

York was reached that same night, for it was intended to make the most of time and to reach Durham early the next afternoon, take a hasty view of the cathedral and arrive in Edinburgh that same evening, it being Saturday.

“I have the address of a well recommended hotel,” said Miss Cavendish, fumbling in her bag for her address book. “We will go there. It is very near the station, I was told, so we can walk.” But though they wandered about for half an hour, the small hotel seemed to have lost itself utterly, for no trace of it could they discover and could find no one who knew it. At last they were directed to an inn which presented a very attractive exterior, fresh paint and a fine old doorway giving them the impression that here they would find ease and comfort. They inquired for rooms, and were told that though the house was rather full they could be accommodated. A shock-headed youth escorted them up the stairs, down a hallway and into a back room.

“Dear me,” Miss Cavendish looked at her companions, “I am afraid this will not do.”

The youth stood stolidly, open-mouthed and unresponsive, but a direct question brought the information that there was no other room to be had.

“It is too late to look elsewhere,” Miss Cavendish decided.

“But this is a feather bed,” said Gabriella; “we can never sleep on that this warm night.”

No amount of questioning seemed to bring any suggestion to the vacant brain of Boots. When he did venture upon the semblance of a sentence it was in such unintelligible Yorkshire dialect that he might as well have saved himself speech. At last Miss Cavendish inquired, “Is there a chambermaid?” There was. “Send her to me.” To their relief the chambermaid was a brisk capable body who took in the situation. It was true that there was no other room vacant. The town was quite full, and the hotels were pressed to their utmost capacity. The feather bed could be removed and placed underneath the mattress if the ladies wished. “Where’s that Boots?”

After some moments Boots reappeared, looking wholly scared, dense and stupid, but his arms were muscular if his tongue was rusty and it appeared to be little trouble to make such changes as should give the travellers a hope of a good night’s rest.

The breakfast was execrable and the price charged by an over pious text-quoting landlady was not modest. “Next time I arrive in York it will be daylight,” decided Miss Cavendish as they took their departure from the house.

“Yet,” returned Gabriella, “I wouldn’t have missed Boots for anything. He answers so perfectly to my ideal of a thick-headed Yorkshire bumpkin that I am satisfied to have met him under such circumstances rather than to have had him left out of my life. He is the most deliciously earth-born churl I have ever encountered. That shock head, that gaping mouth, those lustreless eyes, that vacant stare, when shall we ever meet their like again?”

“But there’s the Minster,” exclaimed Sidney as they approached the great cathedral after their tour of the old city walls. The grand proportions of the building impressed them all, the fantastic gargoyles especially pleased Gabriella. Sidney was delighted with the beautiful stained glass, Miss Cavendish was enthusiastic over the Chapter House. They had walked the length and breadth of the immense interior, had entered the crypt, and had examined many of the details of the cathedral’s beautiful interior by the time the hour of twelve warned them that they must soon leave.

“Stop,” whispered Sidney, “something is going to happen.” In the vast aisles a grave company was assembling. From the chancel wound a long procession of clergy and singers chanting a miserere which echoed through the vast transept toward which the procession was moving. Then through the door, from the bright September weather outside was borne a bier. That this was an occasion of more than usual solemnity the appearance of all indicated. This was the funeral of an esteemed member of the clergy. There were vested priests and choir boys, long-veiled deaconesses and members of guilds. The slow cortège proceeded up the church and with the echoing minor notes of the music in their ears the three Americans stepped out into the sunshine and life from which the old canon had just been borne.

“It was the climax,” whispered Sidney. “Wasn’t it wonderful to see that solemn procession, to hear that heart-breaking music in that most wonderful of cathedrals? You may have Lincoln, Gabriella, but for my part I am overpowered by the beauty of York.”

The train soon bore them to their next stopping-place, “Durham’s Gothic shade,” and here Miss Cavendish became eloquent and declared her allegiance given. “It is so splendidly and simply Norman. Look at those ponderous columns, that combination of mightiness and simplicity, and to think that here lie the bones of the Venerable Bede and of St. Cuthbert. Then its history. Think of the Prelate of Durham so splendidly placed in his fortress, really a sovereign who was rivalled by only one other, the Bishop of Ely on his island. Then there is that pretty legend of how the monks of Lindisfarne were led to the site by a dun cow. You may have your Lincoln imp, Gabriella, it just suits you, but give me the staid and historic dun cow. As soon as we get to Edinburgh I shall sally forth and buy a copy of Scott’s poems. You remember in ‘Marmion’ that it says:

“‘And after many wanderings past He chose his lordly seat at last Where his cathedral huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear.’”

“So this is the Wear,” said Sidney, “and a beautiful site it is indeed for a cathedral. I am almost tempted to grant that it satisfies me as well as York, yet it doesn’t quite.”

“How satisfactory it is for each of us to have a different cathedral,” said Gabriella; “it makes it much more interesting.”

“Gem must have a little mooly cow to match your imp,” said Sidney. And when they left the town a tiny silver effigy of Durham’s historic dun cow was hanging from Miss Cavendish’s lorgnette chain. To Gabriella Sidney had already presented the most grotesque imp that Lincoln could furnish, and for her own satisfaction she had a pile of photographs of York Minster.

They climbed the hill to the railway station, well pleased that they had not left out of their trip the three cathedral towns which had given them such delight. “I wish we could have seen other cathedrals,” Miss Cavendish remarked as they left Durham behind them.

“Oh, but consider how hopelessly mixed up we would be,” returned Gabriella. “Now each of us is entirely satisfied, for we have just one apiece; there is no dividing of our affections, no half-heartedness in the devotion each gives to her own. Possibly there may be others as fine as Lincoln, but I shall never know it, and I am happy.”

“I will venture to say that there is none with a more romantic history, nor which has such literary associations as Durham,” rejoined Miss Cavendish.

“And I don’t believe there is such stained glass in any of them as in York,” Sidney put in, and then they laughed and settled back in their places to look upon the fast-fading landscape. Along a cold but interesting coast their route lay for most of the journey. Once in a while they caught glimpses of a steely blue sea, of ships far out, of stretches of sandy beaches or green clad cliffs, and by nine o’clock they were in Edinburgh.

A genial old cabman landed them safely at their lodgings in a clean, comfortable house, from the window of which they could look over the roofs of houses to the castle which crowned the hill beyond.

“It is going to be fascinating; I feel it,” announced Gabriella, taking her first peep the next morning from her window. “The dear grey city is going to enthrall me. It is not so big but that we can take it in and become friendly with it and its castle. It is a good thing to have a castle as part of the view, for then you feel as if the city had not parted with its history; you feel that its links to the past have not been broken by the sledge-hammer of modernity.”

“Who is making fine speeches?” said Sidney, coming in at that moment. “We must hurry, mustn’t we? if we want to see the soldiers. We must be at St. Giles’s by nine, you know. Don’t stop to prink, Gabriella.”

“If there ever was an occasion that called for prinking it is when I am to attract the gaze of the Black Watch,” returned Gabriella.

[Illustration: “THEY WERE REWARDED BY SIGHT OF A COMPANY UNDER INSPECTION.”]

“But they’ll get there before we do, if we don’t hurry, and we want to see them marching in.”

Owing to Gabriella’s prinking they were late and the Highlanders were in their places by the time the church was reached, so it was not till after the hearty singing of “Onward, Christian soldiers,” in which all joined, and the service was over that the girls had their chance of seeing swinging kilts and swaying bonnets all in line. “Aren’t they the loveliest ever?” whispered Gabriella as they stood on the pavement outside. “I’d like to take one home with me just to keep and look at. See that dickey little officer’s claymore; what a perfect beauty of a cairngorm he has.”

“We must follow them up to the castle,” declared Sidney, no less eager than Gabriella. “It is ever so long before it will be time to go to St. Cuthbert’s, and we’ve nothing else to do.” So up the hill they followed the swinging line to see the red coats and tartans disappear under the grey stone gateway. But they lingered to look down from the parapet upon the town and were rewarded by sight of a company under inspection.

“It is a picture, a perfect picture,” exclaimed Gabriella. “See that officer coming out from the castle, isn’t he fine? It is the same one who had that beauty cairngorm.”

“Yes, and he is quite aware that he is a thing of beauty himself,” remarked Miss Cavendish.

“Never mind, he is a joy forever, and if I could wear a tartan, carry a claymore, and have such a lovely swinging bonnet as that I’d be puffed up, too. I don’t blame him one bit. I am afraid, Gem, that I shall spend all the time we are here in running after the soldiers.”

“I never expected to be crazy over the military,” said Sidney, “but I must say I never saw anything so fascinating as this uniform, nor a finer set of men.”

“Come away, come away, you two,” laughed Miss Cavendish, “or you will lose your wits. It is time we were starting for church if we expect to hear ‘wee Jimmy McGregor’ preach to-day.” And with many a backward look they went down the hill to be set upon by a horde of street urchins who would fain show them the “Boby Burruns” house, but whom they smilingly passed by.

“You girls are not living up to your opportunities,” Miss Cavendish reproached her companions. “I don’t believe that you allowed either your eyes or your thoughts to wander for one moment from those soldiers. I don’t believe that you appreciated the fact that it was in St. Giles’s that Jenny Geddes threw her stool at Dean Hanna, nor that you were near the very site of the Heart of Midlothian when you came away. You were simply bent upon tagging soldiers and I couldn’t get at you.”

“We can hear about Jenny Geddes any time,” returned Gabriella, “but when again will we see Gordon’s Forty-second coming home from service?”

“In the graveyard of St. Cuthbert’s we shall find the graves of De Quincey and--”

“There goes one,” interrupted Sidney as she caught sight of a swaying kilt and a pair of bare knees on the other side of the street. And Miss Cavendish gave up in despair.