The Heather-Moon
heart to Somerled) or any one under its wing, except me and himself, I
feel sure he would risk his own bones for the sake of cracking mine. As
for my sister, he does not approve of her. In looking Aline-ward, his
face seems to become perfectly flat, like a slab of stone, features
almost disappearing, except his slit of a mouth. "Nice, quiet man! So
contented with his uncomfortable perch at his master's feet!" But--when
the slightest mishap befalls the Dragon, and his services are needed as
doctor or surgeon, he lets bottled-up steam escape. Without a word, he
sets to work like a demon, accomplishing what he has to do in about half
the time our best chauffeurs have taken. I should not be surprised at
any moment to see ears, eyes, and nose emit lambent flames. Chauffeurs
are a strange race, and Vedder is the strangest of the lot.
Drawing near Edinburgh, and encountering the first tram lines, it was
pretty to watch Barrie's excitement. To understand, one had to remember
that this was by far the biggest town the child had ever seen, so that
even the outskirts impressed her as something stupendous.
As if for her pleasure, the rain stopped. "The nice, quiet man"
uncovered us pampered passengers, and as we went on again, Edinburgh the
beautiful, lying before us like a shadowy blue and purple map, began to
take shape as a city of spires and monuments and gardens, and reveal its
unique marvels. At this moment, I had my uses. Though it was my first
sight of the Athens of Great Britain, I've fagged it all up so
faithfully for the book that I know what everything is and what most
things mean. I ventured to point out the Salisbury Crags, and Arthur's
Seat watching over the town and Castle like a guardian lion. It was all
very well for Barrie to come to Edinburgh to find her mother, but I
didn't want her to miss realizing that she was entering perhaps the most
beautiful city in the world, and one of the most historic, after Rome. I
knew if I didn't give her this impression Somerled would, and wickedly I
wished her to be primed by me before he got his chance. The only trouble
was that I hadn't enough time to make her see fully all the glorious
contrasts which ought to strike the mind at first sight of Edinburgh,
where Yesterday and To-day gaze at and criticise each other across a
gulf material and imaginary. Even though Somerled brought the Dragon
down to snail's pace, I couldn't do the subject justice, with my best
eloquence snatched at random from notebooks. Mrs. James would keep
interrupting with quotations from "the doctor's" famous unfinished MSS.
I would almost have preferred the silent Vedder as a chaperon. But there
was some comfort in the certainty that Somerled was envying me the place
to which I'd been appointed by himself. As he was driving through
traffic, and couldn't glance round, he was unable to see how Barrie's
eyes wandered from the points I indicated to others which she selected
for herself.
My dramatic announcement, that where now rises the solid gray mass of
old Edinburgh once crouched the wattled houses of the first inhabitants,
scarcely caught her attention. She would gaze dreamily at Arthur's Seat,
because Mrs. James had just unfolded a meretricious legend to the effect
that King Arthur used to sit there and watch his troops. And the dark
crag of the Castle, with its thousand years of history, its crowning
walls and towers, its chasms of purple shadow, riveted her fancy when I
would have discoursed on the modern charm of Princes Street--that "half
a street" so much more splendid than any whole street ever planned.
"The doctor told me, I remember," said Mrs. James, "that at the end of
the eighteenth century, when they wanted to build the new Edinburgh,
they had to bribe people by giving them large tracts of land in order to
make them move out of the old town, or they wouldn't budge. Sometimes a
quarter of what they presented to one man in those days is worth a
hundred thousand pounds now."
In spite of the girl's excited admiration of the goddess-town, her first
question on getting out of the car was to Somerled about her mother. "I
think, if she stops at a hotel, she's likely to choose this one," he
said. "That's why I've brought you here."
"Thank you," she answered. "Thank you for everything." Then it was my
turn to envy him.
She was pale, her face drained of colour, and extraordinarily spiritual
as she stood in the big hall, waiting to hear what Somerled would be
told at the desk. He came back soon, and announced that Mrs. Ballantree
MacDonald had engaged a suite at this hotel, but it was not known
whether she would arrive that night or on Monday morning.
"Meanwhile, I've taken a room for you adjoining Mrs. James, as usual,"
Somerled said. "When your mother arrives and you have met, she can make
any new arrangement for you she chooses."
"And you--will go on--with the others?" asked Barrie, catching her
breath in that engaging way she has when she is excited and trying to
control emotion.
"I shall go on--sooner or later," replied Somerled. "But--I shall have a
look round Edinburgh first, and see what has happened to my old haunts."
I thought her face brightened.
"Aline and I must 'do' Edinburgh too, of course," said I.
She smiled, but as if she were thinking of something else. And it was
then that suddenly, for the first time, I felt capable of developing
into an able-bodied villain--in fact, committing any crime which could
transfer from him to me the kind of look she had given Somerled.
"I must of course go back to Carlisle and my work, as soon as I have
paid my respects to Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald," remarked Mrs. James.
"We'll talk of all that to-morrow," said Somerled, who, I suppose,
engaged her at so much a thousand words--I mean, so much a day--as
chaperon for his "ward." "Whatever happens, you must see Edinburgh while
you're here. And besides, it's on the cards that I may be able to give
you a pleasant little surprise before you leave Scotland. I rather hoped
for details of it to-day; but there's nothing interesting in the mail
they handed me at the desk" (he said this like a native-born American),
"so we must have patience till to-morrow."
"A surprise!" echoed Mrs. James, looking quite pretty and young, as she
surprisingly does sometimes. "Does Barrie know?"
"No," said Somerled. "Barrie doesn't know."
There was just time to go to our new rooms and make ourselves
respectable for church, no light thing in Scotland. Aline and the
Vannecks hadn't turned up yet, but, knowing them and knowing
Blunderbore, I thought nothing strange of the delay. Aline's game was,
of course, to make Somerled jealous of George Vanneck, her old and
well-worn chattel, whom she at heart despises, and to seem not too eager
for his (Somerled's) society, while I, attached to his party by special
arrangement, could protect her interests--and my own.
Somerled had ordered Vedder to wait with the Dragon when the luggage
had been taken down, and thus we saved ourselves some minutes
which we should have lost in walking. We left the car as soon as
possible, however, and plunged into the beauty and squalor of the High
Street on foot. I annexed Barrie as a companion, and Somerled did not
fight for her. Quietly he contented, or seemed to content, himself
with Mrs. James, and my impression was confirmed that, whether he
wanted Barrie or not, he was deliberately standing aside in my favour,
giving me my "chance"--perhaps to test Barrie or me--or both. Who could
tell? Not I. Somerled is hard to read, even for a professional
character-vivisectionist.
"Are you too much excited, and taken up with thoughts of your mother, to
care about all this?" I asked the girl.
She admitted that she was excited, and perhaps a little absent-minded;
but "all this," as I called it, was too wonderful not to capture her
interest in spite of everything.
"Think of Queen Mary and her four Maries, and Darnley, and Rizzio, and
Bothwell, and John Knox passing along as we pass now, on their way up to
Holyrood?" said I.
"Yes. Oh, yes! I _do_ think of them," she answered obediently, her eyes
straying into the shadows of wynd or close, or tracing out the detail of
some carved gargoyle on an old facade.
"Only you think of yourself more----"
"Not myself exactly. But----"
"What then?"
"Well--one thinks of queer things in a place like this, full of romances
and--and love stories. I was wondering----"
"Yes. Don't be afraid to tell me. We're fellow-authors, you
know--brother and sister of the pen."
"That's it! Brother and sister, aren't we? How nice!"
"Of the pen," I amended hastily.
"Story writers must know all about love," she hesitated.
"We do," I encouraged her to go on.
"Then how, if you were writing a story (I'm thinking I may want to do
one), would you make a girl sure whether she'd fallen in love with
somebody?"
"I should make her," I answered cautiously, with an earthquake in my
heart, "I should make her feel--er--a sort of electric thrill when he
touched her, or looked into her eyes. I should make her feel that
nothing was worth doing unless the man was with her."
"I know!" the girl murmured. "She would feel, wouldn't she, as if he
_must_ be there--as if she just couldn't go on living if he weren't."
"That's it," I said. "You've described it graphically."
She regarded me with sudden suspicion. "Thank you very much," she
replied primly. "I'll take your advice and have it like that in my
story, if I ever write it. What a _wonderful_ old street this is! It's
full of ghosts of kings and queens, and noblemen and great ladies, and
soldiers and robbers, every one of them more important than the people
we see."
I couldn't tempt her back to the dangerous subject and soon I prudently
ceased to try. But she had given me what I've heard described as a
"nasty jar." Barrie MacDonald wouldn't have appealed to Basil Norman for
a definition of love if she'd thought of him as a man and not a brother!
The side of me nearest my heart hated Somerled, marching on ahead,
looking singularly attractive and gallant, much too interesting for a
mere millionaire. And the side of me which has telephonic communication
with my brain liked and approved of him, understanding how and why his
personality made a strong appeal to most women. "You've had pretty well
everything you've asked life to give you so far," I said to his back,
"but this girl isn't your kind of girl. It's my sister you ought to
want."
Suddenly, as we drew near to the crowned church of St. Giles--the old
High Kirk--there came to our ears the skirling of pipes. Barrie started
and stopped. Somerled glanced round quickly, his eyes keen. Would she
prove her Highland blood? Would her heart beat for the pipes? That was
the question in his look.
The girl was taken by surprise. We others knew what we had come for, and
what to expect. She had no idea, except that she was being conducted
decently to church.
At the first wail of the pipes the blood of her ancestors sprang to her
face. She clasped her hands together, listening in silence to the
barbaric music, her lips apart, her eyes aglow. And all this for the
call of the pipes! Not yet had she caught her first glimpse of the
pipers; but an instant later the tall figures came swinging proudly into
sight, plaids swaying like tartan tassels, kilts moving with that
wave-about-to-break rhythm given to their garments only by inspired
pipers.
Even I felt a thrill as if each nerve in my body were a string drawn
suddenly taut, but I was gloomily conscious that the Celtic souls of
Somerled and Barrie felt more than I was capable of feeling, a
mysterious something which drew the two together at this instant.
Physically, I stood between them, but I knew that my body was no