The Heather-Moon
the wrong place. If he forgets to do this, he goes back and pronounces
the word over again. He travelled to America from London to be Mr.
Somerled's coachman years ago, and then he learned how to drive a
motor-car and be a mechanic, because he couldn't bear to have his master
tearing over the earth with any one else. Mr. Somerled told me all this,
coming from the railway station, when he was bringing me to Moorhill
Farm.
Mr. Norman saw us off, and was very cast down as Mr. Somerled's luggage
was put on the car, but he was so loyal to his sister, that he would not
say much except, "I'm sorry!" over and over again.
I was afraid that Mr. Somerled would drive (as he told me the night
before he liked driving his own car) and leave me sitting alone in the
immense gray automobile, which has a glass front and a top you can put
up or down. But to my joy he got in beside me, and let Vedder take the
wheel in those large, well-made hands which carry out the marble-statue
idea. I had no notion where we were going; and Vedder drove so slowly
that I guessed he was expecting further instructions.
As soon as we were safely away from the gate I asked the question
burning on my tongue: "You _won't_ take me to Grandma?"
"I thought you trusted me as I trusted you," was the only answer Mr.
Somerled condescended to make.
Suddenly I saw myself a selfish pig. "I do trust you," I insisted. "But
I _ought_ to want to go back of my own accord, rather than let you give
up--things--for me. I'm nothing to you----"
"You're Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's daughter, and--er--a fellow-being."
"If it comes to that, I suppose a worm's a fellow-being. But this worm
has turned, and would as soon cross the path of a perfectly ravenous
early bird as go to its grandmother. So I won't do that, even for your
sake, though you've been so kind; but I wish you'd drop me at the
station where you found me, and let me travel to Edinburgh by train. I
can wait there for mother----"
"Nonsense!" he broke in; a word he seems devoted to, as he has already
used it several times to pound down some suggestion of mine as if he
were breaking it with a hammer. He has the air of a man used to getting
his own way with the world, anyhow with women, and I can't think it good
for him; though Mrs. West's one idea apparently is to do what will
please him, not fussily, but gently and sweetly; so that must be what
men like. I should pity him if he lived with Grandma! I suppose it is my
living with her for so long which makes me feel like going against
strong, dictatorial people, just to see what they will do. With him,
that plan would be exciting. It is ungrateful of me, but I long to
contradict him about something, it doesn't matter what, and try my
naughty little strength against his, like a headstrong, conceited mouse
pitting itself against a lion.
I had no inclination to contradict or fight with Mr. Norman. But he has
pathetic, wistful eyes, asking for kindness, whereas Mr. Somerled's look
bored with things, as if he needed waking up.
I thought these thoughts while he went on to remind me more gently, that
he'd promised to motor me to Edinburgh, and that he had quite a strong
weakness for not breaking promises.
"But I give you back this one unbroken, not even cracked," said I. "So
that's different."
"I don't choose to take it back," said he. "You'll humiliate me if you
refuse to go to Edinburgh in my car--with a competent chaperon, of
course."
"A chaperon! My gracious!" I couldn't help laughing. "Aren't you
chaperon enough--a great big, grown-up man?"
"I suppose you think me very old," said he; "and so I am, compared to
you; but I'm afraid--no, I'm _not_ afraid--to tell you the truth, I'm
extremely glad that I haven't come yet to the chaperon age."
"What is the chaperon age for a man?" I inquired.
"Seventy."
"And you won't be that for a long time," I added dreamily, wondering how
old he really was.
For an instant his eyes waked up thoroughly, and he looked as if he were
in a fury; then he burst out laughing. But his brown face was rather red
when he asked if I would mind mentioning my honest impression of his
age.
I thought a minute, and then said that perhaps he might be--well, nearly
thirty. He laughed again, and seemed relieved, but wanted to know if
thirty struck me as old or young. I didn't know what to answer, not to
be impolite, so I said presently that I had always thought of thirty as
being the year when you were not middle-aged yet, though anything that
happened to you _after_ your thirtieth birthday couldn't matter.
"Still," I went on, "you look young. Only, there's something important
and decided about you, as if you must have been grown up for a long
time."
"Not to deceive you, I'm thirty-four," he said. "Now, no doubt, you'll
consider me a sort of Ancient Mariner. Perhaps that's all the better."
"Looking at you, I can't, even if it would be better," I had to confess.
"You're so alive--so strong, so--almost violent. I can't somehow imagine
that you've ever been younger, or that you can ever grow older."
Just then, when we'd forgotten the chaperon part of our conversation,
the car slowed down and Vedder made a kind of signal of distress. Mr.
Somerled put his head out through the open window, whereupon I think
Vedder must have reminded him that we were coming into town, wanting to
know what he was to do next. In came Mr. Somerled's smooth black head
again, and he glared at me in a kind of amused desperation. "You must
know some one who would act as your chaperon for a few days, at a good
salary--sent home by train when we'd done with her. That ex-governess or
nurse of yours, you told me about."
"Oh, Heppie wouldn't be found _dead_ leaving Grandma," said I. "Not that
she loves her. Neither does a mouse love a cat, when it won't try to
escape. It keeps running back and being polite with its eyes bulging
out."
"There must be somebody else. Think. Has your grandmother any friends?"
"Dear me, no. She'd scorn it. Only a few acquaintances and a relation or
two, whom she snubs when they come to see her and scolds if they don't.
They wouldn't--but, oh, perhaps Mrs. James _might_. I wonder?"
"Where does Mrs. James live?"
I told him quickly that it was in a little sort of cul-de-sac street
called Flemish Passage, not far from English Street, where Heppie and I
sometimes look at the shops; and I was going on to say more about it and
about Mrs. James, but before I'd time to draw another breath, Mr.
Somerled grabbed up a speaking tube and was talking through it. "Find
Flemish Passage near English Street, and I'll tell you where to stop,"
he addressed the back of Vedder's massive head.
"It's an old curiosity shop, and she keeps it," I hurried to explain,
but that didn't seem to matter to Mr. Somerled.
"I hope you like the lady's society," was all he said.
"I love her, and she's an angel, but a very peculiar angel; and Grandma
doesn't call her a lady, so perhaps you won't," I broke the news to him.
"I daresay your grandmother wouldn't have called my mother a lady," he
replied coolly. "She was an angel, and the cleverest, most gracious
woman I ever knew or expect to know." I did like him for saying this.
And something told me that, in spite of his domineering way with me, he
wouldn't be one to put on high and mighty airs with Mrs. James, as
Grandma does.
English Street, of course, is the main street of Carlisle and runs north
to William Rufus's Castle that stands looking over the moors toward the
border, eight miles away. Grandma never would let Heppie take me into
the Castle, because it's turned into barracks now, and swarming with
soldiers. She said that her father called soldiers Men of Blood, and
seemed to think that ought to put me off from wishing to go in, but it
didn't a bit, rather the other way round. I love soldiers in books, and
should like to meet some.
It was near the old Citadel of Henry VIII, where the towers have been
turned into court-houses, that we had to turn off, and it is there that
English Street really begins. It didn't take Vedder long to find Flemish
Passage--which Mrs. James says is named after the Flemish masons William
Rufus brought over to make the Castle, men who settled down afterward to
live in Carlisle. Maybe there were Flemish houses on the spot in those
days--who knows? I love to think there were; and though there isn't a
trace of anything half so ancient as William, Flemish Passage can't have
changed much from what it must have been in the Middle Ages. Even the
people who live there are mostly old, and as the big gray car turned
into the small, quiet cul-de-sac, elderly heads appeared at antique
windows of all the medieval houses. I should think nothing so exciting
had happened in Flemish Passage at all events since Carlisle surrendered
to Prince Charlie. The car looked enormous, as if it were a dragon
swelling to twice its size in rage because it knew there would be no
room for it to turn round when it wanted to get out.
Mrs. James house used to be like the others till she had the two front
windows thrown into one, and took to keeping a shop. The way she
happened to do that was just as it was with Miss Mattie in that darling
"Cranford" I found with father's name in it; only Mrs. James, of course,
was married and Miss Mattie wasn't. I wanted to tell Mr. Somerled about
her, and how her husband, a distant cousin of Grandma's, was the doctor
that couldn't cure my father. Mrs. James herself wasn't a cousin, and
wasn't even of the north, so Grandma never thought of her, as she has no
opinion of southern people. Mrs. James was Devonshire, and (in Grandma's
eyes) a _mesalliance_ for Richard James. He lodged with the Devonshire
girl's mother when he was a medical student in London, Heppie told me
once; and even Heppie puts on superior airs with Mrs. James, whom she
considers a feckless creature. I have an idea Heppie knew the doctor
before he met his wife, and he was her One Romance; so naturally she
thinks the "James Mystery" wouldn't have happened if he had married her
instead. Of course, though, it could never have occurred to _any one_ to
marry Heppie, whereas Mrs. James must always have been a darling and
very pretty in her fluffy way. Grandma says the "James Mystery" (as it
seemed it was called in the newspapers at the time, when I was very
small) never was a mystery except for "fools or sensation-mongers." I
heard her speak those very words to poor Mrs. James, who has always
called on Grandma once a month, ever since I can remember, though
Grandma does nothing but make herself disagreeable and say things to
hurt Mrs. James feelings, knowing that her one dream of happiness is in
believing her husband still lives.
Nobody else believes this, Heppie has told me; because Doctor James had
a motive for not wishing to live, "apart from any disappointment in his
home life." After he didn't cure my father there was another case which
he was supposed not to have understood. I don't know exactly what
happened, for my questions weren't encouraged; but he operated on the
person when he ought not, or else didn't operate when he ought; anyhow
the person was a high personage, so there was trouble, and then might
have been a legal inquiry if Doctor James hadn't gone one day to
Seascale, and from there disappeared. His hat was found on the beach,
and a coat, and though his body was never recovered, all the world
except his wife felt sure he had drowned himself on purpose. As for her,
she is perfectly certain that he is alive, and she hopes to this day
that some time he will come to her, or else send for her to go to him.
He disappeared or died, or whatever it was, seventeen years ago when I
was almost a baby; and he and Mrs. James weren't so very young even