The Heather-Moon
ask if you'll let Barrie--provided she'd like it--" he glanced at the
girl, whose eyes brightened--"take a few excursions with her friend Mrs.
James and me, in my car this week. You'll be busy and----"
"I should have been delighted, and I'm sure Barrie would," broke in Mrs.
Bal, "but you're just too late. A new thing for you, isn't it? I've been
having the most charming visit with Mrs. West, who is better, but must
keep to her rooms for two or three days. Her car will be eating its head
off unless it's used, and I've promised that her friends the
Vannecks--such _nice_ people! I met them in Mrs. West's
sitting-room--and Mr. Norman shall have Barrie for--probably--the very
excursions you have in mind. Too bad! But first come, first served!
You've all been so good to this girl, one hardly knows how to choose
between you. But I thought Mrs. James was going home at once? I
understood from Barrie that she said so last night?"
"She has decided to stay until the little surprise I'm trying to arrange
for her, comes off--or on. She doesn't know what it is, but she pays me
the compliment of taking it on trust. She'll be disappointed at having
to give up the motor runs she was looking forward to with Barrie."
"You've plenty of old friends in Edinburgh, I'm sure," suggested Mrs.
Bal, "and you can make up a party to console dear Mrs. James for the
loss of Barrie."
"I don't believe Mrs. James can be induced to take any excursions
without Barrie," said Somerled: which meant that he didn't intend to
leave Edinburgh while the girl was in it and at the mercy of her erratic
parent. I thought he was anxious Barrie should understand that he was
not going to desert her. Perhaps she did understand, for she is quick in
penetration; but her own pride, and loyalty to Mrs. Bal, kept her from
showing that she felt need of protection, or even that she supposed
Somerled to be offering it. She did show, however, that it grieved her
to refuse his invitation. She took the "tip" he gave and put it all upon
Mrs. James: how sorry she was not to do any more sight-seeing with dear
Mrs. James. But I knew that the name in her heart was not the name on
her tongue.
Aline had scored. I wanted to know just how, and how far, but I
determined not to leave Barrie with Somerled. I needn't have worried,
however, for Mrs. Bal and I had the same thought. She asked if Barrie
would like to go to the theatre with her and watch a rehearsal.
Naturally, Barrie said yes, and Somerled and I saw them off in the
smaller of the two motor-cars which Morgan Bennett had placed at Mrs.
Bal's service for the Edinburgh week. As for Bennett himself, he was
apparently "lying low," by her wish or his own; but I expected to see
him at the theatre that night. Of course, we were all going to turn out
in full force for "The Nelly Affair." Somerled had taken a box, he told
me, and proceeded to invite the whole party; but there also Aline had
got in ahead. During Mrs. Bal's call upon her, they had arranged that
the Vannecks and I should sit with Barrie in stalls offered by the Star.
Mrs. Bal had (she assured us fluently, before starting off in her car)
intended asking Somerled and Mrs. James too, and stalls were provided
for them. But as he had already engaged a box, she would give the seats
to the two Douglases. Perhaps he--Somerled--would have room in his box
for those nice American boys, of whom Barrie seemed so fond?
Aline was eagerly waiting for me to come back and congratulate her upon
her great success. She wanted to tell me everything; but her desire to
talk was nothing compared with my yearning to hear.
"It's all right," she began. "I've made a bargain with Mrs. Bal. I told
her you were in love with Barrie. That's the way I broke the ice, after
I'd paid her compliments and she'd sympathized about my eyes. I said I'd
keep her secret, and answer for the Vannecks, if she'd give you a chance
with Barrie."
"By Jove!" I grumbled. "You didn't mince matters between you! Anything
said about Somerled?"
"Why, I told her that the child was fancying herself in love with Ian,
and behaving rather foolishly. And I said that Ian was naturally
flattered, but that he was the last man to marry a baby like Barrie; and
if we didn't act quickly, the poor little girl might suffer. You must
have noticed, Basil, that Mrs. Bal doesn't like Ian Somerled."
"I've noticed that she takes an impish delight in thwarting him."
"That's because he once thwarted her. She admitted as much. Or, at least
she said she asked him to paint her portrait, and he did paint it. When
the picture was finished, he gave it to her, and didn't even make
himself a copy."
"Well," I replied, puzzled, "I don't see anything in that to upset her.
Even for a beauty like Mrs. Bal it's a compliment to be painted by
Somerled. And surely it was a mark of regard to make her a present of
the picture, when he can get from a thousand to five thousand pounds for
anything he chooses to do."
"Oh, you _man_," exclaimed Aline. "And you pretend to be a student of
women's characters! Of course Mrs. Bal was furious because he didn't beg
to do her portrait and then make two, one for her, and one for himself.
Fancy my having to explain! And besides, there must have been more than
that in the affair. She wouldn't have asked him to paint the picture if
she hadn't wanted to see him often alone, and make him fall in love with
her. His giving her the portrait was a kind of defiance, to show her
that he didn't care _that_ for the original."
"Oh, well, if you think so!" said I.
"Mrs. Bal thinks so. And she's enchanted to get her revenge. Not that
she'd have chosen this way, because, of course, it's a sickening thing
to have Ian and all these men know that she's old enough to be the
mother of a grown-up daughter--and to be obliged to throw herself on
their mercy to help her out of the scrape. She laughs and pretends it's
a joke, but she simply _hates_ it. I hinted to her that if you married
the girl there'd be no talk ever about Barrie being Mrs. Ballantree
MacDonald's daughter. That should be _forgotten_, I said, though they
could correspond with each other and be good friends. Barrie would live
in Canada with you, and be out of Mrs. Bal's life altogether. And I
impressed it upon her that your ideal existence was a quiet country
place. It was the same as telling her that she'd be _rid_ of Barrie by
giving her to you. Whereas, if the girl should marry Ian, Somerled's
wife would always be before the public eye, and everybody would be sure
to find out all about her. Mrs. Bal caught my meaning, you may be sure;
and she promised me that Barrie should go everywhere with us, or rather,
with you and the Vannecks, till I can get about. Anyhow, _nowhere_ with
Ian. Now, you see, I've done all I can for you."
"And for yourself," I was mean enough to add, for the thought of what we
were doing together was not a good thought, and it brought out the worst
of me.
"I haven't any one to work for my interests. _You_ have," she retorted;
and as I'd no mind for further recrimination I begged her pardon,
thanked her gratefully, and proceeded to tell all that had happened in
Mrs. Bal's room. It was not pleasant for Aline to hear how prompt
Somerled had been in trying to relieve Mrs. Bal of her burden; but there
was consolation in his disappointment.
"Do I look very horrid?" she questioned anxiously, "or do you think I
might ask him to take pity on me for a little while this afternoon, and
sit here when you're all out sight-seeing?"
I reassured her, saying that her eyes looked no worse than if she'd been
indulging in a "good cry." She decided, however, that if Somerled came
she would bandage them again and continue to resemble Justice. I didn't
ruffle her feelings by remarking that morally the resemblance would be a
parody.
When Maud Vanneck and I went, soon after luncheon, to ask if Barrie
would walk in Princes Street, with perhaps a stroll along the High
Street, and on to Holyrood or the Castle, I found Mrs. James in Mrs.
Bal's sitting-room with the two Douglases and the four Americans. The
mother and daughter had returned late from rehearsal, and had just
finished luncheon. Mrs. Bal had a letter in her hand, which had
evidently arrived with a box of orchids, probably a tribute from
Bennett; and the lady's desire to get us out of the way suggested the
imminent arrival of a caller worth keeping to herself.
Finally, it was arranged that we should all go out together, the
Douglases assuring the rest of us that they could open doors which would
be shut to strangers.
"Where's Somerled?" I asked Mrs. James, in case he were condescending to
lie in wait somewhere.
"When I saw him last," she replied, "he'd got an immense pile of foreign
letters, and several cablegrams. It looked as if he'd enough to occupy
him the whole afternoon. Important business I suppose; yet in spite of
all, I believe he's been concerning himself with some surprise for me.
He may perhaps have news I shall like to hear when I get back. I expect
he's been telling some friend about those Stuart chairs I want to sell,
and thinks he's got me a buyer."
The Douglases took us to see the _Scotsman_ building, and the secret,
inner workings of a great newspaper. We descended from marble halls to
vast underground regions, the lair of a monster immeasurably more
powerful than the Minotaur who ramped and raved under the Palace of
Crete. The roar of this modern Minotaur was as the noise of Niagara
broken by stormy bursts of thunder. It stunned the intelligence; it
shrivelled the organs of speech like a dried kernel rattling impotently
in an old nutshell. It filled the world and made human happenings, such
as individual lives and deaths, seem of no more importance than the
snapping of thumb and finger in front of a cataract. I couldn't have
lived in the tumult long and kept my wits; but we heard of an employe
who, when some tooth or nail in the enormous monster smote him, could
not bear to stop away long enough to complete his cure, because he was
unable to bear the "awful stillness" of the hospital. Persons of
impregnable nerve-power let us deeper and deeper into the bowels of the
earth, showing us the dragon's brood, and his terrible wife whose
business it is not only to print the newspaper, but to cut its sheets,
and eventually to lay them like eggs, at the rate of thousands a minute:
a most appalling creature she, who so battered my brain with her
accomplishments and the wild cackle she made over them, that weakly I
let Barrie be snatched from me by Donald Douglas.
In the roar and rush and riot I was incapable of caring, though vaguely
I recalled the fact that I had come out with the sole object of annexing
the girl's society. Vaguely too, though only vaguely, I resented the
Douglas method; but I had my revenge almost before I recovered sense
enough to want it. There came, I know not why or how (perhaps one of the
masters decreed it, to strike our ears with the contrast), a sudden
unexpected lull. It was only a comparative lull, and it lasted no more
than a few seconds; but there was time enough to hear Douglas yell into
Barrie's ear, "I must have you for my own."
The next instant he was purple through his soldier-tan. He knew the
dragon and the dragon's wicked wife had betrayed him, as he took
advantage of their domestic clamour to speak in a crowd as though he
were alone with his love in the desert. What Barrie answered, or if she
had breath to answer, none of us could guess, though all, especially the
four Americans, were bursting with anxiety to know. Later, however, when
we went up to the Castle (anything but the Castle, with its thousand
years of history, would have been an anticlimax after that wonderful