The Heather-Moon
she was not quite proof. It was always difficult not to be beguiled by
Barrie.
"I've only you I _can_ come to," said the girl. "You're the one person
in the house except me who isn't old and dried-up."
This was a stroke of genius, but the genius of instinct, for Barrie had
no experience in the art of cajolery. "Was I named after my mother?"
"Only partly. She was a Miss Ballantree, and her first name was Barbara,
I believe; but she disliked it, and when her husband wished to have the
child christened the same, she insisted on Barribel. It seems that is an
old Scottish name also, or Celtic perhaps, for she was Irish, though I
know nothing of her family. But Barribel has always sounded frivolous to
me."
"Yet you would never call me Barrie when I begged you to. I wonder if
there ever was another girl who had to make up her own pet name, and
then had nobody who would use it except herself? When I talk to myself I
always say 'Barrie,' in different tones of voice, to hear how it sounds.
I try to say it as if I loved myself, because no one else loves
me--unless maybe you do; just a tiny, tiny bit. Do you, Heppie?"
"Of course I have an affection for you," Miss Hepburn returned
decorously, half alarmed at so pronounced a betrayal of her inner
emotions, "and naturally your grandmother----"
"Let's not talk about her now," Barrie pleaded. "Was my mother young
when she was married?"
"Quite young, I understand--about nineteen."
"Only nineteen--not very much older than I am. And she stood two years
of Grandma and this house!"
"Barribel, you forget yourself."
"If I do, it's because I'm thinking about my mother. Twenty--twenty-one;
that's what she was when she--went away!"
"She must have been. Of course, it is not my place to----"
"No, dear Heppie, I know it isn't, so don't, please. Could even you
blame her for wanting to run away from this awful house, and she an
Irish girl?"
"She was half American, I have heard."
"Perhaps, for all I know about Americans, that made it even harder for
her to stand Grandma--and everything else. Anyhow, _I_ don't blame
her--not one bit."
"What! not for deserting her loving husband and her helpless child?"
"All day I've been wondering if father knew how to show his love for
her. He didn't to me. I can remember that. I used to be afraid of him
and glad to escape. Perhaps he made _her_ feel like that too--oh,
without meaning it. I'm sure he was good. But so is Grandma
good--horribly good. There's something about this house that spoils
goodness, and turns it to a kind of poison. It must have been awfully
depressing to be married to father if one had any _fun_ in one, and
loved to laugh. As for the 'helpless child,' I dare say I was a horrid
little squalling brat with scarlet hair and a crimson face and a vile
temper, that no one could possibly love."
"It is a mother's duty to love her child, in spite of its appearance;
and if it has a bad temper, all the more should she endeavour by prayer
and example to eradicate its faults in bringing it up. At least, so I
have always been taught. Personally, of course," Heppie hastened to add,
"I know nothing of motherhood and its duties."
"Then you never played dolls," said Barrie gravely. "I never had but one
doll--the porcelain-headed darling father gave me. Grandma let me keep
it because it came from him, and I did love it dearly! I do still. I
learned just how to be a mother, playing with it. I know I shall be a
perfectly sweet mother when I have a child."
"Barribel, you should not say such things. It is most unmaidenly."
"I don't see why," Barrie argued. "Perhaps my mother's people wouldn't
let her say such things when she was a young girl, and then she began to
be an actress, and was so busy she never had time to learn much about
children and duty and that sort of thing. But I won't be unmaidenly any
more, dear Heppie--at least, if I can help it--if you'll only do me one
great favour."
"What is it?" Miss Hepburn inquired cautiously.
"Tell me what's become of my mother. Oh, you needn't be afraid! Grandma
let it out that she's alive. She's not even old yet--not so _very_ old.
You must tell me what's happened to her."
"Nothing creditable, I fear," replied Janet, finding a certain sad
pleasure in the sins of another, so different from her own good self.
"She has, I believe, continued to act on the stage."
"I'm sure she must be the greatest success!" exclaimed Barrie.
"As to that, I have no means of knowing. I always skip news of the
theatre in reading the papers aloud to Mrs. MacDonald."
"Oh, just to _think_ that any day I might have seen things about my
mother in the newspapers, and perhaps even her pictures! I wish I'd
known! I'd have got at the papers somehow before they were cremated. Now
I understand why Grandma tries to keep them out of my hands."
"There were many reasons for that," said Miss Hepburn, loyal to her
employer's convictions and her own pallid copies of those convictions.
"No really _nice_ girl ever reads the newspapers, or would wish to do
so. They are full of wickedness. There is much I have to miss out."
"Do you think my mother has kept her married name for the stage?" Barrie
wanted to know.
"That," answered Miss Hepburn almost eagerly, "has been poor Mrs.
MacDonald's greatest trial--except your father's death. To think that
the name of her son--the name of his great ancestors--should be bandied
about in the theatres!"
"Then she does call herself MacDonald!"
"I fear that is the case. But now it will be useless asking me any more
questions, for I shall not answer them. Will you let me see you begin
your supper?"
"No, dear Heppie, for I'm not hungry; and I want to think. Thank you so
much for talking to me, and being so kind. I believe you'd often like to
be kind when you daren't."
Miss Hepburn looked slightly surprised. She had expected to be teased
for further information, rather than thanked cordially for that already
doled out. "I try to do my duty both to your grandmother and you," she
returned. "I really must go now, and I shall not have to lock your door
again, as Mrs. MacDonald considers the punishment over. You must be
careful to come down the minute you hear the bell, and not be late for
prayers."
"Good-bye, if you must go," said Barrie, following the small, stiff
figure to the door. "I--I wish you'd kiss me, Heppie."
Janet actually started, and a blush produced itself in a way peculiar to
her face, appearing mostly upon the nose, where it lingered rosily at
the end. Kisses were not exchanged under Mrs. MacDonald's roof. Barrie's
was a most disquieting suggestion, and sounded as if she had a
presentiment that she was about to die or, at the best, be very ill.
Still, there was no real impropriety in an ex-governess kissing her late
pupil; and possibly the desire revealed a spirit of repentance and
meekness on the part of Barribel, which deserved to be encouraged.
Without spoken questions, therefore, Miss Hepburn pecked with her
unkissed virgin lips the firm pink satin of Barrie's cheek. The deed
seemed curiously epoch-making, and stirred her oddly. She was ashamed of
the feeling she had, rather like a bird waking up from sleep and
fluttering its wings in her breast. Her nose burned; and she hastened
her departure lest Barribel should notice some undignified difference in
manner or expression.
"I shall see you again downstairs in a few minutes," she said hurriedly.
Barrie did not answer, and Miss Hepburn softly shut the door.
Instantly the girl began making a sandwich of the bread and cheese,
which she wrapped up in a clean handkerchief. She would not take the
napkin, because that belonged to Grandma. Hanging up in the wardrobe was
a long cloak of the MacDonald hunting tartan, which looked as if it had
been fashioned out of a man's plaid. On each side was a pocket; and into
one of these Barrie slipped her little package. Already made up and
lying on the floor of the wardrobe was another parcel, very much bigger,
rolled in dark green baize which might have been a small table cover.
From a shelf Barrie snatched a tam-o'-shanter, also a dark green in
colour. Absent-mindedly she pulled it over her head, and the green
brightened the copper red of her hair. Slipping her arms into the
sleeves of the queer cloak, she caught up her bundle, turned down the
gas, and peeped cautiously out into the corridor. No one was there. The
house was very still. Grandma's bell for reading and prayer would not
ring yet for twenty minutes or more. The girl tiptoed out, locked the
door behind her, and slipped the key into the pocket with the
sandwiches. If any one came to call her to prayers, it would appear that
she had shut herself in and was refusing to answer.
III
"Car-l-i-s-l-e!" The Caruso voice of a gifted railway porter intoned the
word in two swelling syllables, so alluring in their suggestion to
passengers that it was strange the whole train did not empty itself upon
the platform. So far from this being the case, however, not more than
six men and half as many women, one with two sleepy, whimpering
children, obeyed the siren call.
Five of the men looked for porters, and eventually culled them, like
stiff-stemmed wayside plants; but the sixth man had not set his foot on
the platform before he was accosted by two would-be helpers.
What there was about him so different from, and so superior to, his
fellow-travellers that it was visible to the naked eye at night, in a
not too brilliantly lighted railway station, could be explained only by
experts in the art of deciding at a glance where the best financial
results are to be obtained.
The man was not richly dressed, was not decked out with watch-chains and
scarf-pins and rings, nor had he a shape to hint that the possession of
millions had led to self-indulgence. Many people would have passed him
by with a glance, thinking him exactly like other men of decent birth
and life who knew how to wear their clothes; but railway porters and
romantic women (are there other women?) have a special instinct about
men. The two female passengers unhampered by howling babies looked at
him as they went by, and they would instinctively have known, though
even they could not have explained, why the porters unhesitatingly
selected this man as prey.
He was not very tall, and not very handsome, and he was not conspicuous
in any way: but if he had been an actor, a deaf and blind audience would
somehow have felt with a thrill that he had come upon the stage. The
secret was not intricate: only something of which people talk a dozen
times a day without knowing technically what they mean--personal
magnetism. He was rather dark and rather thin, rather like a conquering
soldier in his simple yet authoritative way of giving orders for what he
wanted done. He had eyes which were of an almost startling blueness in
his sunburned face: a peculiarity that made strangers look twice at him
sometimes. If his features hardened into a certain cynical grimness when
he thought about things that really mattered, his smile for things that
didn't matter was singularly pleasant.
He did not smile at the porters as he pointed out that, besides his
suit-case, he had only one small piece of luggage in the van, to be
taken to his automobile; and there were other passengers who looked much
jollier and more amenable than he: yet it was to him that a girl spoke
as he was about to walk past her, after his chosen porter.
"Oh! Will you please be so very kind as to wait a minute!" she
exclaimed.
Her "Oh!" was like a barrier suddenly thrown down in front of him. Of
course he stopped; and if he were not greatly astonished it was only
because so many odd things had happened to him in life, in railway