Amelia Barr - Christine - A Fife Fisher Girl

And Margot’s welcome was in itself a tonic, if anybody had needed one. Her table was already set, she was “only waiting for folks to find out they wanted their dinner – the dinner itsel’ was waitin’ and nane the better o’ it.”

Ruleson came in as she was speaking, and he welcomed the Master of Ballister with true Scotch hospitality. They fell into an easy conversation on politics, and Margot told Christine and Faith to mak’ themsel’s fit for company, and to be quick anent the business, or she wadna keep three folk waiting on a couple o’ lasses.

In half an hour both girls came down, dressed in white. Christine had loaned Faith a white frock, and a string of blue beads, and a broad blue sash. She had arranged her hair prettily, and made the girl feel that her appearance was of consequence. And light came into Faith’s eyes, and color to her cheeks, and for once she was happy, whether she knew it or not.

Christine had intended to wear a new pink silk frock, with all its pretty accessories, but a beautiful natural politeness forbade it. Faith was so abnormally sensitive, she knew she would spoil the girl’s evening if she outdressed her. So she also put on a white muslin gown, made in the modest fashion of the early Victorian era. Some lace and white satin ribbons softened it, and she had in her ears her long gold rings, and round her throat her gold beads, and amidst her beautiful hair large amber combs, that looked as if they had imprisoned the sunshine.

Margot was a good cook, and the dinner was an excellent one, prolonged – as Margot thought – beyond all reasonable length, by a discussion, between Ruleson and Angus, of the conservative policy. Ruleson smoked his pipe after dinner, and kept up the threep, and the girls put out of sight the used china, and the meat and pastries left, and Margot put on her usual Sabbath attire – a light-gray silk dress, a large white collar, and a borderless cap of lace over her dark hair. The indispensable bit of color was, in her case, supplied by a vivid scarlet shawl of Chinese crêpe, one of those heavily embroidered shawls of dazzling color, which seem in these latter days to have disappeared.

It was getting near to seven o’clock, when they entered the hall and found it already full and happy. They had not thought it necessary to wait in whispering silence, until the music came and opened the entertainment. They possessed among themselves many good story tellers, and they were heartily laughing in chorus at some comic incident which a fisherman was relating, when the Ruleson party arrived.

Then there was one long, loud, unanimous cry for Christine Ruleson, for Christine was preëminent as a vive-voce story teller, a rare art even among the nations of Europe. She nodded and smiled, and without any affectation of reluctance, but with a sweet readiness to give pleasure, went at once to the platform, and as easily, and as naturally as if she were telling it at her home fireside, she raised her hand for attention, and said:

“The Grosvenor , an East Indiaman, homeward bound, went to pieces on the coast of Caffraria. There were a hundred and thirty-five souls on board, and they resolved to cross the trackless desert to the Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope. A solitary child was among the passengers, a boy of seven years old, who had no relation on board, and when he saw the party beginning to move away, he cried after some member of it, who had been kind to him. The child’s cry went to every heart. They accepted him as a sacred charge.

“By turns they carried him through the deep sand and the long grass. They pushed him across broad rivers on a little raft. They shared with him such fish as they found to eat. Beset by lions, by savages, by hunger and death in ghastly forms, they never – O Father in heaven! Thy name be blessed for it! they never forgot the child. The captain and his faithful coxswain sat down together to die, the rest go on for their lives – but they take the child with them. The carpenter, his chief friend, dies from eating, in his hunger, poisonous berries; the steward assumed the sacred guardianship of the boy. He carried him in his arms, when he himself was weak and suffering. He fed him, when he was griped with hunger. He laid his little white face against his sun-burned breast. He soothed him in all his suffering.

“Then there came a time when both were ill, and they begged their wretched companions – now very few in number – to wait for them one day. They waited two days. On the morning of the third day, they moved softly about preparing to resume their journey. The child was sleeping by the fire, and they would not wake him until the last moment. The moment comes, the fire is dying – the child is dead!

“His faithful friend staggers on for a few days, then lies down in the desert and dies. What shall be said to these two men, who through all extremities loved and guarded this Little Child?”

Christine had noticed the Domine rise, and she pointedly addressed this question to him, and he understood her wish, and lifting up his hands and his voice, he cried out triumphantly:

“They shall be raised up with the words – ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me!’ These good men,” he continued, “were men of the sea, Mariners of England,

The Domine might have continued, but there was a sudden thrill of enchanting violins, the door was flung open, and the magical notes of a foursome reel filled the room, and set the feet of all tapping the floor, and made all faces radiant with anticipation. The good man then realized that it was not his hour, and he sat down, and watched the proceedings for a few minutes. Then he saw James Ruleson take his wife’s hand, and watched their first steps in the joyous reel, and he was satisfied. If the dancing was under Ruleson’s control, he knew all would be done decently and in order, and he went away so quietly that his absence was not noticed for some time.

Now, if the dancing that followed was like some of our dancing of today, I should pass it with slight notice, or it might be, with earnest disapproval, but it was not. It was real dancing. It was not waltzing, nor tangoing, and it was as far as possible from the undressed posturing called classical dancing. Everyone was modestly clothed, and had his shoes and stockings on. And naturally, and as a matter of course, they obeyed the principle of real dancing, which is articulation; that is, the foot strikes the ground with every accented note of the music. This is how Goldsmith in “The Vicar of Wakefield” shows us Olivia dancing – “her foot being as pat to the music, as its echo.”

All good dancing is beautiful, and it never requires immodesty, is indeed spoiled by any movement in this direction. However, as my fisher company danced modestly and gracefully, rendering naturally the artistic demands of the music, there is no necessity to pursue the subject. As the night wore on, the dancing became more enthusiastic, and graceful gestures were flung in, and little inspiring cries flung out, and often when the fiddles stopped, the happy feet went on for several bars without the aid of music.

Thus alternately telling stories, singing, and dancing, they passed the happy hours, mingling something of heart, and brain, and body, in all they did; and the midnight found them unwearied and good-tempered. Angus had behaved beautifully. Having made himself “Hail! Well met!” with the company, he forgot for the time that he was Master of Ballister, and entered into the happy spirit of the occasion with all the natural gayety of youth.