The Heather-Moon
dragon cave), Donald Douglas walked meekly with his cousin, leaving
Barrie to Jack Morrison. As for me, I had temporarily lost my
individuality, and with that roar still echoing through my brain,
vibrating through my nerves, I was glad to crawl along, talking to
nobody, and picking up dropped or untied bits of myself as I went. For
the moment, frankly I didn't care how many men proposed to Barrie, or
whether she accepted them all. But afterward, it was different. It
occurred to me that Jack Morrison was not only a handsome and gallant
fellow, but said to be very rich, at least as rich as Somerled, and ten
years younger. Aline and I might be mistaken about the girl's feelings
for Ian. Very likely it was no more than a romantic sort of gratitude;
and though I absolved the child from the smallest taint of mercenary
motive, it was almost impossible that a sleepless night had not given
her some wise counsel. She was too sensitive and quick-witted a girl, I
reflected, not to have seen that she could not go on living with her
mother, and that it was a necessity to find a niche somewhere. All these
young men saw this also, though they knew no more than the fact that
they were prayed to consider Mrs. Bal an elder sister of "Miss
Ballantree," therefore they were hastening to offer her sheltering
niches, more or less desirable. In other circumstances, they would have
waited a few days, long enough at least for Barrie to know which was
which, and get their features and some of their characteristics ticketed
with the right labels; but as it was, each saw he had no time to waste
if he didn't want his friend or foe to get in ahead of him. While we
were at the Castle, looking at Mons Meg (which recalled Thrieve) and the
banqueting-hall of armour with its faded banners and fadeless memories;
gaping at the mysterious place over the entrance door where, in a
bricked-up alcove, a baby skeleton was found wrapped in cloth of gold
embroidered with a royal monogram; walking through the wainscoted room
where Mary of Guise died; gazing at the long mislaid crown of Bruce
("the Honours of Scotland"); seeing sweet Queen Margaret's Chapel where
the Black Rood lay till it went in state down the hill to make Holyrood
holy; peering at the wall-stairway down which the Douglas boys were
dragged after the "black dinner"; admiring the kilted soldiers; and
drinking in the view over hill and valley and mountains, towns and
nestling villages, the vast, colourful checkerboard of beautiful Mary
Stuart's journeys, flights and fightings: while beholding treasures and
splendours which are as the red drops of Scotland's heart's blood, man
after man took his place at Barrie's side and became her cicerone. Each
talked with her awhile, and after a few brief minutes allowed a change
of partners, the discarded one humbly retiring to Mrs. James's side. It
was really funny; or at least so it seemed until enough self-assertion
came back to admit of my entering the lists. Then I promptly lost my
sense of humour, and had no wish to look for it. I wanted only to look
at Barrie, who was unusually flushed and bright of eye.
By this time there wasn't much left to tell her about the Castle or the
Castle Rock. When I began to work off my erudition by mentioning the
name of Edwin, for whom Edinburgh was named, and who made it a royal
borough in the eleventh century, she said:
"Oh, Mr. Douglas's cousin, the other Douglas, told me that!"
When I related the tale of that gallant Francis who was able to lead Sir
Thomas Randolph and thirty soldiers up the perilous rocks to surprise
the Castle at night, having learned the way when sweethearting down in
the Grass-market, Barrie confessed that she had heard the story already.
Jack Morrison had found it in some old book he had bought at the shop
under John Knox's house, in the High Street. There was no use trying to
work up or classify historic thrills for her in this vast heart of
Scotland; she had been given them all, with generous additional thrills
from private hearts, Scottish and American.
"Has every single one of those chaps proposed to you?" I flung the
question in her face. "You might tell your Mentor."
"Oh, not Donald Douglas's cousin!" she answered hastily. "He's engaged
to some one in the Highlands."
"Good heavens, then all the rest _have_ done it, in a bunch!"
"I think you're _horrid_!" she said indignantly. "I've always heard that
girls don't tell such things to any one."
"They do to their brothers--of the pen, if they have any such. Besides,
you don't need to tell. I'm a regular Sherlock Holmes where people
I--like, are concerned, and I know what's been happening to you this
afternoon. A manna-rain of proposals, in the wilderness of Edinburgh
Castle. Many girls would have accepted them all, and then sorted them
out to see which they liked best; but I have a shrewd idea from the look
of the gentlemen's backs that they are now one and all your adopted
brethren."
"It's almost wicked to joke on such a subject," Barrie reproached me,
trying not to laugh, "and it's not nice of you to make fun of them, just
because you consider yourself superior, as an author who is always
analyzing people's minds and motives. It's not as if they were so much
in love with me that they had to propose in a hurry for their own sakes.
It's not that _at all_; but only because they thought it wouldn't be
very convenient for--Barbara to have me live with her, travelling about
so much, or if she should marry. So they felt as if something ought to
be _done_ for me, you know, as soon as possible."
"Sainted, unselfish young men!" I murmured. "But I don't consider myself
superior, as it happens. I'd do the same thing in a minute if I thought
there were the faintest chance of your giving me an answer different
from theirs. Is there?"
"Don't talk nonsense!" she exclaimed. "But of course, I'm happy to say,
I know you don't mean it."
"Well, if you're happy to say that, I'll leave you your fond illusions
for the present," I returned. "But, as girl to man, tell me; don't you
rather like being proposed to?"
"It's very exciting," she admitted. "I never expected, somehow, that
such a thing could happen to me."
"Oh, didn't you? Why not?"
"Well, there's my red hair, which I always thought was _fatal_, until I
saw my mother's portrait--and heard Mr. Somerled say he liked painting
red-haired women."
"Red hair _can_ be fatal, though not in the way you appear to mean,"
said I. "Which thrilled you more, the Castle or the proposals?"
"Oh, the Castle, of course!" she answered scornfully. "After the first
one or two, they seemed like interruptions."
All five of my rivals (there might have been six, had it not been for
the girl in the Highlands) having had their medicine, I was allowed
almost as much as I wanted of Barrie's society during the walk down from
the Castle Rock, and to Holyrood. Together she and I walked through that
most romantic royal house of all the world; and long as I may live,
never shall I forget those hours. Chestnut-tressed Mary herself could
not have been lovelier than the red-haired girl who walked beside me,
and when the royal beauty came on a day of chill, northern haar, to her
Scottish realm, she was only a year older than this child we all love
but think too young for love. Yet already, at nineteen, Mary was a
King's widow, and had been Queen of France.
It was of Barrie's romance, Barrie's future, I thought most, as we
wandered side by side through the haunted rooms where Mary danced and
loved and suffered, where her grandson Charles I of England came, and
left his ruby Coronation ring for remembrance, and where Prince Charlie,
her far-off descendant, made hearts flutter at the great ball given in
his honour. But it was the past which had all Barrie's thoughts, unless
she sent a few to the man who had stayed at home reading his letters,
instead of following in her train.
We looked at Queen Mary's bed with its tattered splendour of brocade:
the box filled with relics of her short reign in Holyrood: her neat
embroideries, her tear bottle, and Darnley's glove, which Barrie thought
Mary would not like to have kept with the other things: and then, having
saved the best for the last, I took the girl up to the little
supper-room where Rizzio was murdered. Barrie gazed at everything in
silence: and now we could both be silent when we liked, for the
chastened ones had meekly trooped off to show Mrs. James the Abbey, or
Royal Chapel, where Mary and Darnley were married, and where a hundred
things had happened, things connected with others whose romances were as
poignant if less well remembered here, than hers.
We had come up the secret stairway in the wall, because I wanted Barrie
to miss no thrill this place could give; but it was not the thought of
the murder-scene which most caught her imagination. She listened to my
dramatic version of the tragedy of the room, and of the dark closet
where Rizzio tried to hide, and shuddered a little; but soon she was
drawn, as if beckoned by an unseen hand, to the bevelled mirror with
scalloped edge, which Mary brought with her to Scotland from France, a
dim oval full of memories, may be, of dear, dead days at Amboise and
Chenonceaux.
"What does that poor piece of blurred glass make you think of so
intently?" I asked, when Barrie had stood silently staring down the
veiled vista of mystery for many minutes. "You look like a young modern
Cassandra, crystal gazing."
"So I am!" the girl almost whispered. "I'm trying to see something in
the mirror--the things _she_ saw in it--or to see her eyes looking into
mine. If anything can be haunted, it is this mirror. Think of what has
passed before it. But do you know, I don't believe it has ever really
intelligently seen anything since the day Queen Mary went away from
Holyrood. I feel she ran here, to take one last look into her mirror,
and to bid it farewell as she bade farewell to France, gazing and gazing
as the land faded from her sight forever. Then, when she'd gone, the
glass she loved grew dim as it is now, and _blind_ because it could no
longer give back the brightness of her eyes. There's nothing left in it
now but sad dreams and memories of the past."
"Did you ever," I asked, "go down into the cellar at midnight on All
Hallow E'en with a candle and a mirror and wish to see the face of your
future husband?"
"No, indeed," Barrie answered emphatically; "we had no such tricks at
Hillard House."
"Now, in this mirror, if any in the world, you might be able to see such
a vision, not only at midnight, but on an ordinary afternoon, like this
for instance," said I. "Suppose you stop thinking of Queen Mary for a
minute and concentrate on yourself. Wish with all your heart for the
face of the man you'll love, the man you'll marry, to appear under this
clouded surface of glass."
Barrie looked somewhat impressed by my mysterious tone as well as the
overwhelming romance of her surroundings. She put her face close to the
mirror, and I was about to profit by the situation I'd led up to when
some one stepped between us and looked over the girl's shoulder. It was
Somerled, who must have come in just in time to overhear my advice, and
take advantage of it for himself. But he could not wholly blot me out of
the mirror. Both our faces were there, to be seen by Barrie, "as in a
glass darkly." She gave a little cry of surprise, and wheeled round to
smile at Somerled.
"You came after all!" she exclaimed, forgetting or pretending to forget
the solemn rite which had engaged us. But I must admit I was in a mood
to be almost superstitious about it. I had prophesied to the girl that
she would see reflected the face of the man she was destined to love and
marry. An instant later she had seen two faces, Somerled's and mine.