The Heather-Moon
"August 4th. Fearful row. General upset. Don't see any book unless I
write it alone. Aline says I can save situation for her. Would like only
too well do what she wants, but difficult bring it off as things are.
Chances in favour of other man. Temptation consent be cat's-paw. Is that
fair to the lovely chestnut in the fire? Extra-ordinary that child like
this can so upset us all. What is the electric attraction we can't
resist? More than normal amount of radium, perhaps!"
"Well, why don't you laugh at the rattle of the dry bones?" asked Basil,
as I read on, more and more puzzled.
"I haven't come to many funny things yet," said I, "except about Job.
That was rather good, though I don't see how you weave such things into
your books."
"Job--Job?" he repeated vaguely. Then a rush of blood went over his
whole face, up to his forehead. His dreamy dark eyes looked suddenly
anything but dreamy. "Good Heavens!" he gasped. "What have you got
there?" and began to ransack all the pockets of his waistcoat and coat
until he found the twin of the book he'd given me. "This is what I meant
you to see," he said in a queer, ashamed voice.
I handed the first book back to him. He seized it and glanced from page
to page, looking almost ill. By and by he came to something which seemed
to scare him. As far as I could tell, it was farther toward the end than
I had read.
"Would you mind showing me where you left off," he asked.
"It was where you were wondering whether your new heroine had swallowed
radium or something," said I.
"Oh!" He looked relieved. "Well--I wouldn't have had you see that
idiotic stuff for a good deal. But I told you, didn't I, that if the
book went on I'd have to put you into it? There's a lot of silly rot
there. Poetical license!"
"The thing that made the most impression on me was the part about the
red hair," I said. "The description sounded so nice. Who was Circe,
please? Was she Scottish? It's a name a Pictish princess might have
had."
"The first Circe lived even before the Pictish princesses," Basil
answered, quieting down, though he was still very flushed. "But she's
had a good many descendants--one or two at least in each generation of
women born in every country. Not that you--I mean the new heroine--will
be one of them really."
"What did Circe do?" I hurried on.
"Do? She was an exceptionally attractive woman. She had a special kind
of magnetism that nobody could resist. She amused herself by turning all
the men she knew--there were quite a lot of them--into animals of
different sorts."
"I think it would have been cleverer and more attractive of her if she
had turned animals into men," said I.
"That's what _my_ heroine can do," Basil explained. "She's a kind of
miniature baby Circe, for her red hair and general get up, and her
curious power of upsetting people and their plans from the first minute
they see her. But--my heroine wouldn't and couldn't turn her victims
into beasts. She makes them want to transform themselves into something
very extra special in the way of manliness."
"Why do you call her _your_ heroine with an emphasis?" I wanted to know.
"Isn't she your sister's heroine, too?"
"No. My sister doesn't see her as a heroine for a novel. And that's why
I say the book we started out to write won't materialize. No author can
write a story he or she doesn't take a strong interest in."
"That's where my writing is easier," I said. "I just put down all the
things exactly as they happen, and as I see and think about them. So
there's no heroine--and no hero--and no story."
"Yes, that is simpler," he agreed. "That's the way the Great Author
writes His book. Only all His characters are heroes and heroines in the
stories of their own lives."
As we talked, the moon went down in the west. The sky was a pale lilac,
like a great concave mirror reflecting the heather. Then it darkened to
a deeper purple, and made my thoughts feel like pansies, as they
blossomed in my mind. We fell into silence. But Mrs. James said
afterward that was because we were hungry and didn't realize what was
the matter with us. Perhaps she was right, but it didn't seem so prosaic
at the time.
As the car brought us near the town of Ayr (which, with its lights
coming out, reddened the purple mirror) it was too dark to see details
clearly. But, driving slowly, we were aware of a thing that loomed out
of the quiet landscape and seemed strangely foreign to it, as if we were
motoring in Greece or Italy, not Scotland. It was a great classic
temple, rising on the banks of a stream that laughed and called to us
through the twilight.
"Can it be somebody's tomb?" I asked. But there was no cemetery, only a
garden, and close by a camel-backed bridge that crossed the surging
river.
"It must be the Burns monument," said Basil. "I've never been here, but
I've studied up the place and looked at maps till I can see them with my
eyes shut. This is the right place for the monument, with a museum, and
some garden statues of Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnnie, which we'll
have to visit by daylight to-morrow. I hope you're going to invite me to
sight-see with you?"
"It's not for me to invite any one."
"Look as if you want to, and it's done."
"Oh, I'll do that!" I promised.
VIII
We stopped at a big railway-hotel when we came into Ayr. Basil and Mrs.
West took rooms there too, because it was the best in town, and Mrs.
West always wants the very best--except when she's depressed by bad
notices of her books!
It was late, and she was so faint with hunger that she begged us not to
dress, but to go to dinner in ten minutes. We agreed; but when we'd
hurriedly washed our hands and faces and assembled at the rendezvous,
there was no Mrs. West. Basil was the only one who didn't look
surprised. Ten more minutes passed, perhaps, giving us time to think how
hungry we were too, and then the lady appeared. She hadn't exactly
dressed, but she had done something to herself which made her look fresh
and lovely and elaborate, in contrast to Mrs. James and me.
"Dear people!" she exclaimed, "I'm so sorry if I've kept you waiting,
but I simply couldn't find a _thing_; and the more haste, the less
speed, you know. Mr. Somerled, you've been here before in your
pre-American days. Do, like an angel-man, show me the way to the
dining-room. I can never get used to going in late, with a lot of people
staring. Basil will take care of Barrie and Mrs. James."
I felt as if I should go mad and bite something if she were to cultivate
the habit of calling me "Barrie"; but as I'd invited both her brother
and Sir S. to do so, and Mrs. James had never called me anything else, I
couldn't very well make Mrs. West the one exception.
A good many of the hotel guests had finished dinner by that time, but
twenty or thirty were still at their tables in the big dining-room,
which seemed to me absolutely palatial after my "glass retort."
Evidently we were well in the thick of "tourist zone" again, judging by
the look of the people, for most of them had the air of having travelled
half round the world in powerful and luxurious motor-cars. You could see
they weren't "local"--with four exceptions, our nearest neighbours. I
thought they were pets; but Mrs. West stared in that pale-eyed way I
noticed women have when they wish to express superiority or contempt.
All four of the pets were old--two very old, two elderly. The first pair
wore bonnets which they must have had for years, things that perched
irrelevantly on the tops of their heads, and looked entirely extraneous.
The second two had something more or less of the hat tribe, and Sir S.
said this was because their elders considered them girls, and granted
them the right to be frivolous in order to attract the opposite sex.
Mrs. West was sure that such headgear couldn't be got for love or money
except in small remote Scottish towns. "Might come from Thrums," said
Sir S. I'd never heard of Thrums, and Basil explained that it was a
famous place in a novel, written by a man of my name, Barrie. "The real
place is Kerrimuir," he went on, and promised to give me the book.
At this Sir S. glanced our way for an instant, looked as if he
wanted to speak, changed his mind, and turned again to Mrs. West, next
whom he sat, with Mrs. James on his other side. No wonder, I thought,
he liked better to look at her than me, as she was so fresh and
elaborate and charming. All through dinner he talked to Mrs. West
and a little to Mrs. James, leaving Basil to entertain me, which he
did very kindly. Still, Sir S. seemed annoyed because a party of
young American men at a table near ours stared at me a good deal,
though he didn't care to pay me any attention himself. He drew his
eyebrows together and glared at them once, whereupon the nicest
looking of the four (and they were all good-looking) bowed. Sir S.
returned the nod stiffly, with an "I-wonder-if-I-really-_do_
know-you,-or-if-this-is-a-trick-to-claim-acquaintance?" sort of
expression.
Perhaps I ought to have been annoyed too, but I wasn't a bit. They were
_such_ nice boys, so young, and having such a glorious time! I was glad
they looked at me and not at Mrs. West, and I was sure they didn't mean
to be rude. Probably they'd seen mother, or her photographs, and were
puzzling over the resemblance which Sir S. and Basil both say is very
strong, in spite of "marked differences." Whenever we speak of her, I
feel as if I could hardly wait till Monday, though at other times the
present seems so enchanting I can't bear to have it turn into the past.
The American boys (I thought that none of them could be over twenty-one)
lingered at their table a long time after they seemed to have finished
their dinner. They played some kind of game with bent matches which made
them laugh a good deal; but the minute we got up, I heard them push back
their chairs, though I didn't turn my head.
Basil and I walked out of the dining-room after the rest of the party,
and the boys came close behind us. I heard one say in a low voice, "Did
you ever see such hair?" and I felt a sort of creep run all the way down
my plait and up again into my brain, because I've been brought up to
think red hair ugly, and it's hard to believe every one isn't making fun
of it. However, I remembered what Sir S. said about the flame-coloured
heads of the children in the road, and that stuff Basil wrote in his
notebook about Circe. Then I felt better, and hoped that the boys were
not laughing.
Outside the dining-room door the handsomest one got near enough to speak
to Sir S. "How do you do, Mr. Somerled?" he said. "Don't you remember
me? I'm Jack Morrison, Marguerite's cousin. I met you twice at Newport
while you were painting her portrait."
"Marguerite Morrison. 'M. M.,' the grateful model who gave him the
refrigerator basket!" thought I. And Sir S. proceeded to give the cousin
a refrigerator glance; but it didn't discourage him. He went on as
cordially as ever. "My three chums want to be presented: Dick Farquhar,
Charlie Grant, Sam Menzies. We're all Harvard men, seeing Europe in
general and Scotland in particular, in our vacation. We've every one of
us got Scottish blood in our veins, so we sort of feel we've earned the
right to make your acquaintance. And we've been wondering if you'd
introduce us to your friends, if you don't think it's cheek of us to
ask!"
Sir S. looked as if he did think it great "cheek"; but if he hesitated,
Mrs. West quickly decided for him. She gave the nice American boy one of
her sweet, soft smiles, and said, "Of course Mr. Somerled will introduce
you all to us; or you may consider yourselves introduced, and save him
the trouble. My name is Aline West, and this is my brother, Basil
Norman."