The Heather-Moon
after making such good sales, and her eyes lit at the thought of a motor
hat and coat--they seemed exciting purchases. But when Mr. Somerled
mentioned the fact that mother is one of the best-dressed women in the
world, the little woman looked frightened. "I shan't dare take the
responsibility of choosing an outfit for the child, then," said she
nervously. (I do wish people wouldn't call me "child," though it's nicer
from Mrs. James than Mrs. West!) "Supposing she shouldn't make the
correct impression? Won't you be persuaded to help us, sir, with your
advice about the most important articles?"
Somehow I feel that Mr. Somerled hates "sir" as much as I hate "child."
I expected him to make an excuse, that he knew nothing about such
things--or "articles," according to Mrs. James. But instead, he snapped
at the suggestion and looked as pleased as Punch. I suppose he doesn't
want me to be a fright and disgrace his car on the journey.
When Miss Hubbell had come in from the next house, smelling of some
lovely sort of jam which she and her mother had been making, off we
three went in the gray automobile, Mrs. James trying not to look
self-conscious and proud, nor to give little jumps and gasps when she
thought we were going to run over creatures.
It is many years since she has been to London. I think she was there on
her wedding trip and never since: and besides that expedition, Exeter
and Carlisle are her two largest cities: but, in order to impress the
great artist, she patronized Carlisle, saying we "mustn't hope for
London shops." I longed to catch his eye, because I'm sure he sees
everything that is funny; but it would have been horrid to laugh at the
kind darling, trying to be a woman of the world.
In the end, it was Mr. Somerled and I who chose everything, even Mrs.
James's motor coat and hat, for she was too timid to decide; and if she
had decided, it would have been to select all the wrong things. I had to
get my dresses ready-made, because of starting for Scotland next
morning, and it was funny to see how difficult Mr. Somerled was to
please. One would have thought he took a real interest in my clothes;
but of course it was owing to his artistic nature. We found a blue
serge--I wouldn't have believed, after my deadly experience, that blue
serge could be so pretty--and a coat and skirt of creamy cloth; and an
evening frock of white chiffon, I think the girl called it. Actually it
has short sleeves above my elbows, and quite a low neck, that shows
where my collar-bone used to be when I was thinner than I am now. It
seems an epoch to have a dress like that. It was Mr. Somerled who picked
it out from among others, and insisted on my having it, though, simple
as it looked, it was terribly expensive. Mrs. James thought I couldn't
afford it, as I had so many things to do with my fifty pounds, but Mr.
Somerled brushed aside her objections in that determined way he has even
in little things. He said that it would be money in his pocket, as an
artist, to paint me in this gown; and that I must sit for him in it. He
would call his picture "The Girl in the White Dress"; and as he'd show
it in London and New York and get a big price, of course he must be
allowed to pay for the dress. Mrs. James seemed doubtful about the
propriety, but he drew his black eyebrows together, and that made her
instantly quite sure he must be right. When she'd agreed to my having
the dress on those terms, she couldn't--as he said--stick at a mere hat,
so he bought me a lovely one to wear with the creamy cloth. He suggested
that I should keep it in the "tire box" while motoring--a huge round
thing on the top of the car.
"It is just like having a kind uncle, isn't it, my dear?" asked Mrs.
James. But I didn't feel that Mr. Somerled was the sort of man I could
_ever_ think of as a kind uncle, and I said so before I'd stopped to
wonder if it sounded rude. Luckily he didn't seem offended.
I am writing this in the curate's sitting-room upstairs in Mrs. James's
house. It is night, and we are to start to-morrow morning very early,
because I happened to mention that I'd never seen the inside of Carlisle
Castle, or put my nose into the Cathedral. Grandma does not approve of
cathedrals, and their being historic makes no difference. Mr. Somerled
said that we could visit both, and then "slip over the border." Oh, that
border! How I have thought of it, as if it were the door of Romance; and
so it is, because it is the door of Scotland. I am afraid it must be a
dream that I shall cross at last, to see the glories on the other side,
and find the lovely lady who to me is Queen of all Romance--my mother.
Still, I've pinched myself several times, and instead of waking up in my
old room at Hillard House each time I've found myself with my eyes
staring wide open, in the curate's room, which has a lot of books in it
and a smell of tobacco smoke, and on the mantelpiece Mrs. James's
wedding wreath as an ornament under a glass case.
Mr. Somerled has gone to a hotel; but he stayed to supper with us, and
Mrs. James brought out all her nicest things. It was much pleasanter
than supper last night at Moorhill Farm, though Mrs. West had lovely
things to eat. I am glad I shall never see Moore again! But I should
like to see Mr. Norman. I could feel toward him as if he were a brother.
But I don't know what to say about my feeling toward Mr. Somerled. I
think of him as of a knight, come to the rescue of a forlorn damsel in
an enchanted forest. After delivering the damsel from one
dragon--Grandma--he is going to take her away with another quite
different sort of a dragon; a well-trained, winged dragon, which people
who don't know any better believe to be only a motor-car.
II
I don't know how I dared with such a man, but I talked foolish fairy
talk to Mr. Somerled, _alias_ the Knight, this morning, and he answered
gravely in the same language. I should be doing him a great service, he
said, if I could lead him back to fairyland, because he used to know the
way, but had lost it long ago. He had given up the hope of finding it
again, and until the other day had feared that all the fairies were
dead.
"If you find fairyland, it ought to be while the heather moon shines," I
told him. "But I shan't have much time to help you look for it, because
in five days you'll be leaving me with mother, and travelling on alone.
You must search for the key to the rainbow wherever you go; because, you
know, it might be _anywhere_, and the light of the heather moon would
show it gleaming in the grass, or under a flower, or even in the middle
of the road before your eyes."
He looked at me in an odd, almost wistful way, and I couldn't look away
from him, though I wanted to, for it was as if he were reading my inmost
Me--using my eyes for windows, of which I couldn't draw the curtains.
"_You_ might find the key, if you haven't got it already," he said.
"Anyhow, I can't find it without your help, But no matter. Perhaps I
shouldn't know what to do with it if I did, now I've grown old and
disillusioned."
Then I answered, because I couldn't help it under the spell of his eyes.
"You're not old or disillusioned. You're a Knight: and knights who
rescue damsels are always young and brave."
Before I saw him, if any one had told me a person of over thirty was not
middle-aged, I should have thought it nonsense. But now I see that even
_thirty-four_ is not old. It seems exactly the right age for a man.
"If you dub me Knight, I christen you Princess," said he, laughing as if
embarrassed, yet pleased. "Because, I confess I wandered near enough to
the border last night, to think of you as a princess who'd been shut up
in a glass retort, as all really nice princesses were in my day, in
fairyland. Now the retort has been opened, though the princess believed
it to be hermetically sealed----"
"It was the knight who opened it!" I interrupted him. "But did you
_really_ go near to the border?"
"The border of fairyland."
"Oh! I meant Scotland. But, after all, to me it seems much the same
thing. Doesn't it to you?"
"I haven't thought of it so for a good many years," he said. "Yet it
might be----"
I lost the rest, because Mrs. James came in, ready to start. We had been
standing together in the little sitting-room at the back of the house
while she gave last directions to Miss Hubbell. And I had on my new
serge, of course, with a blouse more fit for an angel than Barrie
MacDonald; and a gray coat and a gray hood with a long gray veil
floating out from it--all the same gray as the car, and chosen to match.
I couldn't help thinking, when I put on the hood before the curate's
looking-glass, that in spite of a green crack across my face and one
purple splash on my eye (it's a very antique glass, not used to girls'
complexions) I really wasn't so bad. Oh, if only mother is pleased! But
of course all mothers must be pleased with their children. One reads a
great deal in books about mother's love.
We bought two small trunks yesterday, one for Mrs. James and one for me,
of the same gray colour as our cloaks, both made especially for a
motor-car: and Mr. Somerled has a gray trunk too, smaller than mine,
also a thing he calls a suit-case. This morning he brought us each a
present of a little gray handbag, fitted with brushes and combs and a
mirror, and tiny bottles for eau-de-cologne. My fittings look like gold,
though I suppose of course they are only gilded; and Mrs. James's are
silver. She thought it would hurt his feelings if we refused to accept
his presents, though she was brought up to believe that a lady must
never take anything from a gentleman except books, sweets, and flowers.
However, she says she has often found it difficult to conduct life
according to rules of etiquette, as there are so many complications
they've forgotten to put in.
It was only half-past eight when we started, for we wanted to see the
Cathedral and the Castle. We were going to the Cathedral first, and on
the way we had to pass a big motor garage which has always made my heart
beat just to see, whenever Heppie and I have come to town shopping. I
used to wonder what it would be like to sail through the wide doorway in
a car of my own. Poor me, in my "glass retort," with little chance, it
seemed, of escaping from the dragon to travel in any sort of mobile
except the pillow-mobile into which I used often, to jump at night, and
flash away to far-off countries of dreamland.
Now, poking its large nose out of that garage was a gray motor (but not
so nice a gray as ours) conducted by a wisp of a chauffeur. He was
driving two passengers, and I bounced on the springy back seat of our
car with surprise as I recognized them. Down went my head mechanically
in as polite a bow as if I hadn't been turned out of her house by Mrs.
West, though, when I realized what I was doing, I was afraid she might
pretend not to know me. It must make one feel such a worm to be ignored
when one has just grinned and ducked! But I needn't have feared. Mr.
Norman took off his cap as impressively as if I were really the princess
of the knight's fairy dream; and Mrs. West bowed, with a sweet, sad look
first at Mr. Somerled, then finishing up with me--just the reproachful,
yet resigned martyr-look a queen ought to give a crowd of rebellious
subjects on her way to the scaffold where their cruelty had sent her.
Of course, if I had to show this to Mr. Norman, and get him to criticise
my writing as he offered to do, I couldn't put in such things; so
perhaps it's as well I shall have to worry on alone.
Mr. Somerled, who was driving our car (with Vedder by his side, tooting
a musical horn), took off his cap as beautifully as Mr. Norman did,
without upsetting the steering, though there seemed to be a hundred