The Heather-Moon
back," he said. "I really don't believe you know yet what the word
means, or what you've done to earn it. Are you contented with me as a
companion, or would you rather have Douglas, or Norman? I should really
like to know, out of sheer curiosity, so you needn't mind telling the
truth, for in any case you won't hurt my feelings."
"Why, but you are my Knight!" I said. And he asked no more questions
then about personal matters. We talked of the scenery, or he let me
talk, and said that it didn't disturb him in driving. He seemed quite to
take an interest in what I had to say, as if I had been an intelligent
person like Mrs. West. He didn't laugh at the high-flown ideas I've
collected about history, and frontiers between countries, but said that
my enthusiasms were contagious.
"I'd given up all hope of a thrill at crossing the border," he said. "I
thought it was too late. 'What's long sought often comes when unsought,'
you know--or rather, you don't know yet, and I hope you never will. You
are making me wonder if, after all, instead of putting off my homecoming
too long, I haven't chosen just the right moment."
I was glad to hear this, though I don't know even now how I managed to
give him that idea, unless by boiling with inward joy, and always
insisting that the world's not old, but young--a wonderful place, where
every flower and bird and every ray of sunlight is worth being born to
see.
I asked him not to tell me when we came to the border, because I hoped
to know it by instinct; and, as it turned out, I _did_ know. But I think
any one with eyes must have known.
Out from old Caer Luel, our road had crossed the Eden where Willie
Armstrong escaped, and ran on white and smooth toward the Solway, whose
sands glistened golden in the sun. The tide, which I'd read of as racing
like a horse at gallop, was busy somewhere else, and the river lay
untroubled, a broad, blue ribbon in the sandy plain where Prince
Charlie's men and horses once struggled and drowned.
Now I knew we must be in the Debatable Lands, the hunting-ground of the
border raiders, beautiful wild land, full of the sound of rivers, voices
of the Teviot and the Eden, the Ettrick and the Yarrow, singing together
and mingling with the voices of poets who loved them. Through the
country of dead Knights of the Road my live Knight of To-day drove
slowly, thinking maybe of dim centuries before history began, when the
Picts and Gaels I have read of fought together among the billowy
mountains; or of the Romans building Hadrian's wall against the "little
dark men"; or of the many heroes, Scottish and English, who had drenched
the heather with their blood since then; or perhaps of himself, and the
days of his boyhood when he said good-bye to bonny Scotland and went to
try his fortune in the New World. Whatever his thoughts may have been,
they made his face at first sad, then hard; I fancied that it was of
himself as a boy he thought, and of his father and mother, whom he will
not see when he goes home; so to bring him out of his brown study I
began to tell him a story Mrs. Muir had told me about the border. It was
the tale of the last Picts, and the secret of the heather ale. All, all
the mysterious little dark people had been swept away in a great
massacre by the Scots after centuries of fighting with the Romans; and
only a father and son were left alive. "Give me thy Pictish secret of
brewing heather ale," said the King of the Scots, when the pair were
brought before him, "and I may perhaps spare thee and thy son."
Then the dark Pict shut his eyes for a moment, and thought what to do.
He thought that the King would kill him and his son when he had their
secret; and he thought of the mead which had the power of wafting the
Picts to the Land of Pleasant Dreams.
From the bonny bells of heather,
They brewed a drink langsyne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in blessed swound
For days and days together,
In their dwellings underground.
When he had thought with his eyes shut, the Pict said that he could not
tell the secret while his son lived, because of the shame he would feel
that his own flesh and blood should know him a traitor. He said this
because he believed they would kill the boy quickly without torture; and
the old man was right, for they bound his son hand and foot, and flung
him out to sea. "Now tell us the secret," they said. But the Pict only
laughed and answered, "Now I will not tell, because there is nothing
more you can do to hurt me." So they killed him quickly too, in their
rage, and the secret of the heather ale died with him.
Though he liked the story, the obstinate man argued that the last of the
Picts were not really killed in this or any other way; that they had
slowly died out as a race, and had married with the Scots, leaving a
strain of their blood in the land to this day. "You know," he said,
"that Somerled of the Isles married a Pictish princess, and so there's
Pictish blood in the veins of the MacDonalds, in your veins and in mine,
though I'm of cottage birth, and you are of the castle."
"I know that story of Somerled," I answered, "and how, hero though he
was, he got his princess by a fraud. It makes Kim seem more human."
"I wonder if his princess thought so?" said Somerled the Second.
"Why, of course she did," I answered him as if I were in her confidence.
When I was in Carlisle, and proud of my English birth, I used to like
reading about the great battle of the Solway Moss, where two hundred
English horsemen killed or took prisoners more than a thousand Scots
they'd chased into the bog; but now I've forgotten everything except
that I'm a Scottish lass; and though I'm of the Highlands, and these
were Lowland men, I don't, as I did, love to dwell upon the raid of the
Solway Moss. Still, I could not get it out of my head, and while I
pictured it, as I have to do most things, whether I wish or no, I saw a
bridge--a fine stone bridge, flung like the span of a petrified rainbow
across a small stream.
"That must be the Sark!" I gasped. "And we've come--we've come to the
border!"
"Good lass, to divine it!" said he. And how I liked his calling me a
good lass--it was better than princess!
We crossed the bridge slowly, lingering with half the car in England,
half in Scotland; then suddenly we sprang on gayly, with a rush ahead,
past the famous toll-house, which looked exactly like all its pictures.
"Ho for Scotland--our ain countree!" I cried; and though he did not turn
to me, I saw his profile looking flushed and glad.
"Now you should take back your own name of MacDonald again, from this
very minute of crossing the border," I said, when I had drawn in my
first long breath of Scotland. "Somerled's a grand name, yet it was only
the foundation of MacDonald. But I forgot! You've made your fame and
money as Somerled. Which do you love more--your Scottish blood or your
American fame and fortune?"
"Blood is stronger than water, and fame is running water," he said. "As
for the money, I've cared too much for it--at least for the power it
gave me. I didn't make the most of it with my pictures, and greed led me
to love it better than my true work. That's why I lost the way to
fairyland, little Princess. I buried myself under the 'shields and
bracelets,' and I buried my talents, such as they were. For a while
Somerled tried to deserve the great name he had chosen--but only for a
little while. When by accident he grew rich, he began to wallow. Not a
picture worthy of his boyish ambition has he painted for five years.
What he has done have been 'potboilers.' He forgot that he was an
artist, and wanted only to be a millionaire. Disgusting! Now that I've
told you this, do you--a MacDonald--bid me to take the name again at the
border, where, as a boy, I laid it down--long ago, with high hopes and
vows romantic enough to please even you?"
"Yes," I said, "I, a MacDonald, bid you to take up the name, and with it
all the old hopes and the old ambitions, as you come back into your own
land. Forget your silly money, and remember only that you're an artist
in a lovely motor-car. Won't _that_ make you happy--and a boy again?"
"Something is making me happy--and a boy again," he echoed.
IV
Any dull body who says that the minute you're over the border everything
is not changed, can have no eyes--nor nose, because even the smell is
different. It is--I'm sure it is--the adorable smell of peat. I have
never yet smelt peat, but this is like my dreams.
Oh, how beautiful everything was as we crossed the span of the stone
rainbow! A fresh wind had sprung up and out of the brilliant sunshine a
shower was spurting, like diamonds set in gold. I saw the dazzling sight
with eyes full of rain and curls.
"Here we'll find the rainbow key--on _this_ side the bridge, in the
keeping of the Border Saints or Wizards," said I; for the hills and
lowlands that rolled away to the making of Scotland had a colour as if
stained with the fadeless, dried rainbows of centuries. Mingled with
peat was the tea-rose scent of summer rain and of running water, which
is as the fragrance of fresh-cut melons. Clouds like huge white brooms
swept the sky, and surging suddenly round us was a wave of sheep,
charming, reserved, Scottish sheep with ears of a different shape from
the English kind, like those of exaggerated rabbits. They looked at us
with horizontal eyes of pale brass cut across with narrow slits of jet,
and their thick wool, wet with rain, sparkled as if encrusted with
diamond dust. With them was a collie, much collie-er than English
collies, with a pawky Scottish smile. Not that I know what pawky means,
but it seems a word I ought to use at once, now we are on Scottish soil.
Nobody need tell me that the first houses of Scotland have any
resemblance to the last houses of England. Maybe the country hasn't had
time to change much, just in crossing the bridge. I won't argue about
that. But the houses are as different from English houses as Scotsmen
are from Englishmen. Could you ever mistake a Scot for an un-Scot? No!
Our wide-apart eyes and our dreamy yet practical expression, our high
cheekbones, our sensitive, clear-cut nostrils, and the something
mysterious in our gaze which no one can explain or understand, not even
ourselves, is all our own. I have just found this out since crossing the
border. And am I not a MacDonald of Dhrum?
I can't say that the first Scots I met--men, women, or children--looked
like descendants of the robber hordes who used to make the Borderland
their home; yet I paid them the compliment to believe they were such.
And you never would dream that the great-great-grandchildren of raiders
could have built for themselves the mild, solid, self-respecting houses
these people have dotted along the road where King Arthur passed, and
where some of the most romantic battles of history have been fought. But
so it is. And there the houses are. The people have found a kind of
stone to build them with, which looks like pressed roses; and there are
door-stones and even gate-stones of such an incredible cleanness, that
some women must devote their whole lives to their service, as nuns do to
prayer.
Soon we came to the village and the post-office of Gretna Green,
bristling with picture post cards. There was the expected group of
whitewashed, one-story houses plastered with exciting notices: "Old
Priests' Relics," "Marriage Registers Kept," and delightful things like
that. So far, the scene was just what I'd imagined; but there was one
feature in the picture which made me feel I must be dreaming, it was so
surprising and extraordinary.
In front of the Blacksmith's Shop stood the quaintest vehicle out of a