Bonnie Lassie

“ He’s quite poorly dressed. Does he need money? Is that what’s wrong?”
“That’s it, Bobbie,” returned the Bonnie Lassie with a half-smile. “He needs the money.”
The rampant philanthropist stirred within Miss Roberta Holland’s fatally well-meaning soul. “Would it be a case where I could help? I’d love to put a real artist back on his feet. Are you sure he’s real?”
On the subject of Art, the Bonnie Lassie is never anything but sincere and direct, however much she may play her trickeries with lesser interests, such as life and love and human fate. ”

“ Dinna gang, my bonnie lad, dinna gang and leave me;
Dinna gang, my bonnie lad, dinna gang and leave me;
When a' the lave are sound asleep, I am dull and eerie;
And a' the lee-lang night I'm sad, wi' thinking on my dearie.
O dinna think, bonnie lassie, I'm gaun to leave thee;
Dinna think, bonnie lassie, I'm gaun to leave thee;
Dinna think, bonnie lassie, I'm gaun to leave thee;
Whene'er the sun gaes out o' sight, I'll come again and see thee.
Waves are rising o'er the sea; winds blaw loud and fear me;
Waves are rising o'er the sea; winds blaw loud and fear me ”

“ The Bonnie Lassie’s smile broadened without change in its subtle quality. “Julien Tenney isn’t exactly a pauper. He just thinks he can’t afford to do the kind of thing he wants and ought to.”
“What ought he to do?”
“Paint—paint—paint!” said the Bonnie Lassie vehemently. “Five years ago I believe he had the makings of a great painter in him. And now look what he’s doing!” ”

“ The big man has taken him by the arm and is leading him along. Poor Plooie! He’s all wilted down. It’s a shame!” cried the Bonnie Lassie, beginning to flame. “It ought not to be allowed.”
“Probably they’re taking him away. Do you see an official-looking automobile anywhere about?”
“There’s a strange car over on the Avenue. Oh, dear! Poor Annie Oombrella! But—but they’re not going there. They’re going into Schepstein’s basement.”
I could feel the Bonnie Lassie fidgeting on the bench. ”

“ JEAN. Of a' the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the West, For there the bonnie lassie lives, The lassie I lo'e best: There wild woods grow, and rivers row, And mony a hill between; But day and night my fancy's flight Is ever wi' my Jean. I see her in the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair: I hear her in the tunefu' birds, I hear her charm the air: There's not a bonnie flower that springs, By fountain, shaw, or green ”

“ And win thee for my bride, bonnie lassie, O.
But the frowns of fortune lower, bonnie lassie, O,
On thy lover at this hour, bonnie lassie, O,
⁠Ere yon golden orb of day
⁠Wake the warblers on the spray. ”

“ I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie, ”

“ Smile again, my bonnie lassie, lassie, smile again,
Prithee, do not frown, sweet lassie, for it gives me pain.
⁠If to love thee too sincerely be fault in me,
⁠Thus to use me so severely is not kind in thee. ”

“ The Bonnie Lassie came to the door with him and stood gazing out across the flaring lights and quivering shadows of Our Square. It seemed to Cyrus that the flower-face drooped a little.
And indeed the Bonnie Lassie was not feeling very happy. When one's adopted world goes well, the claims that draw one back become irksome ties. ”

“ To reach that little green space of peace amidst our turmoil of the crowded, encroaching slums, we must pass the Bonnie Lassie’s house, where her tiny figurines, touched with the fire of her love and her genius, which are perhaps one and the same, stand ever on guard, looking out over Our Square from her windows. ”

“ The Bonnie Lassie always does. So the bare studio was from time to time irradiated with Bobbie Holland’s youthful loveliness and laughter. For there was much laughter between those two. Shrewdly foreseeing that this bird of paradise would return to the bare cage only if it were made amusing for her, Julien exerted himself to the utmost to keep her mind at play, and, as I can vouch who helped train him, there are few men of his age who can be as absorbing a companion as Julien when he chooses to exert his charm. ”

“ I don't!” denied the brown-and-gold fairy vehemently.
“Then why have you come down here?” demanded the inexorable sculptress.
“Because,” said the fairy in a fairy's whisper, “I—I just wanted to see him again. All the other men are so alike.”
“Yes; yes, I know,” said the Bonnie Lassie and threw an arm over her shoulder, and gave me a swift and wordless command to go away and be quick about it.
For the subsequent developments of the affair I expressly disclaim all responsibility. True, I was made an agent. But that was coercion, such coercion as the Bonnie Lassie practices on all of us. ”

“ You're only a man,” said the Bonnie Lassie with sovereign contempt. For the moment she ceased to be an artist and became a philosopher. “Some people,” she pronounced sagely, “just naturally fall in love by degrees. Some”—her face turned unconsciously toward the outer room where Cyrus the Gaunt was busy, and became dreamy and tender—“run away from love and are overtaken by it. And some go open-hearted and open-armed, to meet it when it comes. That is Paula. She's the type of woman to whom there is only one possible man in the world. ”

“ Not for nothing is one undisputed empress of Our Square. The Bonnie Lassie had the courage of one who rules. She swooped into that black byway like a swallow entering a cave. Now the screams were muffled, with a grisly, choked sound. They led her flying feet toward a narrow side passage. But before she reached the turn, a towering bulk sped by her, almost filling the thin slit between the walls.
When she came within view, the matter was apparently settled. A swarthy, vividly clad woman cringed against one wall. Against the other Cyrus had pinned a swarthier man. ”

“ Cyrus Staten had not been needed: the canaille would always respect a proper show of authority from its superiors; and so went home, rustling and sparkling.
After all, Plooie was not much hurt. Perhaps more frightened than anything else. Panic was, in fact, the reason generally ascribed in Our Square for his quiet departure, with his Annie, of course, on the following Sunday. Only the Bonnie Lassie dissented. But as the Bonnie Lassie reasons with her heart instead of her head, we accept her theories with habitual and smiling indulgence rather than respect—until the facts bear them out. ”

“ And miss a bonnie lassie, when the kye come hame.
See yonder pawkie shepherd, that lingers on the hill,
His ewes are in the fauld, and his lambs are lying still
Yet he downa gang to bed for his heart is in a flame,
To meet his bonnie lassie, when the kye come hame.
Awa wi' fame and fortune—what comfort can they gi'e?—
And a' the arts that prey upon man's life and liberty
Gi'e me the highest joy that the heart o' man can frame,—
My bonnie bonnie lassle when the kye come hame! ”

“ Just as her father reached home, Eliza came from the Vicarage to spend an hour or two with him.
"This is your day, daddy, and Monday is to be Fanny's day," said the girl. "I am going to have another holiday on Monday, so that I may see everybody, and Fanny is to come on Monday."
"My bonnie lassie! Why, you look almost as well as Fanny herself," exclaimed Brown, holding his girl at arm's length to admire her.
"I shall know whether I have really grown, as people say I have, when Fanny comes, and I can stand at the side of her. ”

“ Cyrus, to do him justice, tried his best. They stopped one dollar and forty cents out of his Saturday's envelope for what he and the roller did to the barriers and lanterns. By the time he had swung into the cross-street, trailing wreckage, the Bonnie Lassie was out of sight and out of his world.
IV Winter comes, stern and sharp, like an unpaid landlord, to Our Square, with sleet and gale for its agents of eviction. No longer are the benches blithe with the voice of love or play or gossip. The wind has blown them all away. ”

“ Also a certain scene enacted in sight of her studio windows had stuck in her memory; a powerful and half-drunken brute of a teamster flaying an overdone horse; the interposition of the Meanest Man; the infuriated descent, whip in hand, of the driver; the rush at the spare, trim, uncombative-looking man who had removed his spectacles and pocketed them; then the inexplicable and dismayed check in mid onset of the assailant. The Bonnie Lassie couldn't understand it at all ”

“ You’ve got to be a man. You’ve got to have—”
“Are you going to tell her?” interrupted the Bonnie Lassie who had been sent for to share the news.
The Little Red Doctor fell suddenly grave. “She’s another matter,” he said. “I don’t think I shall.”
Matters were going forward with Mayme—beg her pardon, Mary McCartney, too.
“Better and more of it,” she wrote the Bonnie Lassie. “They rang me in on one of their local Red Cross shows to do a monologue. Was I a hit? Say, I got more flowers than a hearse! You’ve got to remember, though, that they deliver flowers by the car-load out here. ”

“ The mob wilted to a purposeless and abashed crowd. The crowd disintegrated into individuals. The individuals asked themselves what they were doing there, and, finding no sufficient answer, slunk away. Plooie was triumphantly escorted by Madame Tallafferr and Black Sally, and (less triumphantly) by my limping self, to the nearest haven, which chanced to be the Bonnie Lassie’s house. Annie Oombrella pattered along beside him, fumbling his hand and trying not to cry. ”

“ Now the way of a snake with a bird is as nothing for fascination compared to the way of the Bonnie Lassie with the doomed person whom she has marked down as a subject. Barbran hesitated, capitulated, came to the Bonnie Lassie’s house, moused about Our Square in a rapt manner and stayed. She rented a room from the Angel of Death (“Boggs Kills Bugs” is the remainder of his sign, which is considered to lend tone and local interest to his whole side of the Square) , just over Madame Tallafferr’s apartments, and, in the course of time, stopped at my bench and looked at me contemplatively. ”

“ It is a recognized fact in Our Square that when the Bonnie Lassie determines to get anything done, Providence, with rank favoritism, invariably steps in and does it for her. This powerful and unfailing ally it was that brought Molly Dunstan to Our Square, white-faced, hot-eyed, and with a gnawing fire of despair at her heart, plunging blindly against the onset of a furious March wind, until the lights of Schoenkind's drug store guided her to harbor. ”

“ Still, some of the unsoundest theories I have ever heard from the Bonnie Lassie's lips have been inexplicably borne out by the facts afterward. When I marvel at this she laughs and says that an old pedagogue who has spent his life with books mustn't expect to understand people.
As for the wild-rose Meg, she passed wholly out of the little, close-knit, secluded world of Our Square. Even those few of us who knew MacLachan and counted ourselves his friends feared to mention her name, not so much because of his known temper as of the haunting pain that grew in his eyes. ”

“ Summer is tyrant in Our Square now. The leaves droop, flaccid and dusty, on the trees, and the sun gives a shrewish welcome to the faithful who still cling to the benches. Gone is Cyrus's chariot of flame and thunder. The work is done. Gone, too, is Cyrus, and with him the Bonnie Lassie, after a wedding duly set forth with much pomp and splendor in the public prints. Among those present was Our Square. ”

“ But the Bonnie Lassie was scandalized. On general principles she mistrusts that any marriage is really made in heaven unless she acts as earthly agent of it. What had those two poverty-stricken little creatures to marry on? She put the question rhetorically to Our Square in general and to the two people most concerned in particular. Courts of law might have rejected their replies as irrelevant. Humanly, however, they were convincing enough.
Said Plooie: “Who will have a care of that little one if I have not?”
Said Annie Oombrella: “He is so lonely!” ”

“ But when the Bonnie Lassie announced “Doggy,” it was his face that was the study.
Of that performance I shall say nothing. It is now famous and familiar to thousands of theater-goers. But if ever mortal man spent twenty minutes in fairyland, it was David, while Mary was playing the work of his fancy. At the close, he disappeared. I suppose he did not dare trust himself to join in the congratulations with which she was overwhelmed. I found him, as I rather expected, on the bench where he had sat when Mayme McCartney first found him. ”

“ She had taken to dropping in upon us to see my lodger. She, at least, did not try to convert him. At first she just sat and twinkled at him, and the man does not live who can resist the Bonnie Lassie when she twinkles. On her second visit she brought him cigarettes in profusion and announced that she was going to sculp him in miniature, and proceeded forthwith to do it. Before the job was done they were sworn comrades. She would sit by his couch with her modeling tools and clay and work while he boasted in a hoarse, thin pipe of the evil things he had done. ”

“ Age warms itself in reflected fires. I was sitting on my favorite bench in Our Square some weeks later, meditating with a mild glow upon the outcome of the encounter between Carlo and his Tiger (for which, by the way, the Bonnie Lassie put in a wholly unjustified claim of half-credit) , when two figures walking quite close together approached and stopped in front of me. They were very good to look at, those two, as youth and joy and the splendor of love are always good for old age to look at. I welcomed them to a corner of my bench, facing the Varick mansion, which was poor policy. ”