The Heather-Moon
'Bulls kindly requested not to charge motor-cars. No sitting down
or cud-chewing allowed in the middle of roads. Deer will please,
when darting across, start at least six yards ahead of motors.
Chickens will keep to their own side of the road when they have
chosen it three times. Rabbits not to run directly ahead of the car
for more than three miles at a stretch.'
As we lumbered along with Blunderbore, each heather-dyed hill that
rolled out of our way disclosed a new, or rather a very old,
castle. I should think there must be as many castles in this part
of the world as there are cottages. I know we saw more! except
perhaps those sweet little dwellings grouped together in the
charming villages of Ballater and Braemar. No wonder the King and
Queen love this part of the world. Basil thought everything here
quite foreign-looking: but there's always that French spirit in
Scotland, isn't there? I'm sure the coffee is so good just because
of that.
It was fun having luncheon at Braemar Castle, which has more
turrets than you can count without knowing it well. Each room
nearly has a turret, and some have two: and on the thick wooden
shutters names of soldiers quartered in the Castle after Prince
Charlie days are roughly carved. Of _course_ there's a dungeon, and
a secret way to the far-off village and river: and when you enter
you have to wind up and up a tower stairway with here and there a
little deep-set iron-barred window to give you light. I wish you
could see the Princess's Persian dog, Mirzan, of the oldest race of
dogs in the world: yellow-white as old ivory, tall and thin and
graceful as a blowing plume. He takes strange attitudes like dogs
in pictures by old masters; and you feel he can't be real. He must
have stepped stealthily out from a dim tapestry hanging on one of
the thick stone walls, and he will have to go back to his place
beside the sleeping tapestry knight, as soon as he has finished
running after the doves, who have left their dovecote and are
balancing with their coral feet on the battlements, or walking in
the courtyard. Seeing this castle of the Princess's makes me quite
envy you having Dunelin. I should like to live in a castle. _Do_
buy Dunelin, as you said you sometimes thought of doing, and invite
me to be a humble little member of one of your big house-parties.
Your deserted princess, BARRIE.
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST BARBARA: Every prospect pleases and only man is
vile. At least, I don't mean vile, but upsetting. It is too bad
about Basil. I don't know what to do. I hope _you_ aren't hoping
that I may fall in love with him? Something he said makes me think
_he_ believes you want it. But why should you? You don't know him
and his sister so very well. They aren't old friends. Darling, if I
am a bother to you--and I know I am--I'll go far away and change my
name and do anything you like, except marry Basil. It isn't that
I'm too young. It seems to me if I loved a man desperately I should
like to marry him while I was young, so as to give him all my
years, and because I should grudge the days and weeks and months
lived away from him. But Basil is just like a brother. He might
hold my hand all day, and I shouldn't have a single thrill, which
he says is the way for a girl to find out whether she's really in
love.
Everything might be so pleasant, if it weren't for this silliness.
We have seen Elgin, which has the most exquisite ruined Cathedral
that ever lived or died; and sweet Pluscarden Abbey not far off;
and Forres, full of memories of Macbeth; and a mysterious carved
shaft of sandstone called Sweno's Stone; and the hidden, secret
glen of the Findhorn River, where we had to get out, and walk for
miles through a gorge of the most entrancing beauty. Sometimes it
was wild and grand, sometimes peaceful as a dream of fairyland.
Every kind of lovely tree grew there, out of sheer, rocky walls red
as coral, or pale and glistening as gray satin; and you looked far
down on water brown as the brown of dogs' eyes--deep pools, and a
hundred rapids and tiny cataracts filling the glen with their
singing. But Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck would walk far ahead of us on the
steep narrow paths, which were so slippery I had to let Basil help
me, and it was most embarrassing and futile to keep refusing him
all the time. He says we were meant for each other, but I know
better!
You remember, don't you, dear, I didn't want to take this trip? My
feeling must have been a presentiment.
At Culloden Moor I couldn't help crying a little over Prince
Charlie and his brave Highlanders, for I think no other battlefield
can keep its sadness and romantic pathos, and its effect upon the
mind as that does. You know it's almost within sight and sound of
the sea; and the voice of the wind among the pines--dark, straight
ranks of pines like soldiers in mourning, standing in a
bloodstained sea of heather--seemed to me like the wail of ghostly
pipes playing a Highland lament. Wandering among the wavy graves
and piled cairns of the different clans who gave their lives in
vain for Prince Charlie, I was with Basil all alone, for those
wretched Vannecks would go off by themselves, as usual, in the most
marked way. He made me wipe my eyes with his handkerchief, and then
folded it up to 'keep forever.' He does choose the strangest places
to make love, and always contrives the minute the others go away,
to bring the subject round to that. Luckily we are all four
together in the car, as the chauffeur drives, but even there he
looks at me, which is quite getting on my nerves. Yesterday I asked
to sit in front, saying I wanted more air. It was after leaving
Inverness; and I had the best of it, quite by accident. It was a
horrid road, almost the only bad one we've had; full of flat holes
which the chauffeur called 'pans,' and the others, in the back of
the car, nearly had their spines come through the tops of their
heads. Strange what a difference there is, sitting in the driver's
seat! The bumping lasted all the way to Drumnadrochit, where we
turned away from a long, straight loch to mount up into lovely
strange country; then plunged down a steep hill to Invercannich--a
charming place ringed round with lovely, mysterious-looking
mountain-peaks which seem to say 'If we chose, we could tell you
the secret of Glen Affric, which we are hiding.'
Isn't that an alluring name--Glen Affric? A little while ago I
should have wanted immensely to see it; but now whenever any one
proposes walking through a glen I always argue that it would be
better not.
Last night we stopped at Strathpeffer, a gay and beautiful little
cure-town, which is like a walled flower-garden set down in the
midst of wild and stern Caledonia. The mountains are the walls; and
heather flows round them and beats against them like a purple
ocean. It is so foreign looking that it reminded Basil of Baden
Baden. Now we are going on into Ross-shire, which Basil describes
as a country of moorlands and great spaces where red deer live. But
already we have seen deer walking quite calmly out of the forests
on to our road, where they stop to gaze quizzically, without the
least fear, at the car. It is almost as if they took it for a
brother-animal. To-night we shall be at Loch Maree, and of course
you won't get this in time to telegraph there. But perhaps you
might wire to Ballachulish, where we shall be to-morrow. Do,
dearest, and tell me to come back to you. In spite of all the
loveliness, I can't stand this much longer, for I cannot make Basil
stop without being really _rude_ to him. You needn't keep me more
than a day if it's inconvenient. I'll go anywhere afterward--except
to Grandma's. Or even there, if she'll have me back!--Your loving
and anxious BARRIE.
TELEGRAM TO BARRIE FROM MRS. BALLANTREE MACDONALD
If you want to please me and be very happy yourself say 'Yes' to
B. N. Splendid thing for you. Could wish nothing better for your
future. Do relieve my mind by writing that you have decided. Yours
lovingly and hopefully,
BARBARA.
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST: Your telegram gave me the most dreadful surprise
when I arrived here at Ballachulish, and everything else seemed
against me too, for there was a wire from Mr. Bennett's sister
asking Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck to make their visit to her as soon as
possible, at that shooting lodge you told us about. They wanted to
go, and I was the only thing that prevented them. If I had an
_enemy_ trying to push me into a corner this would have seemed like
his (or her) work--just as if it had been planned on purpose. But,
of course, that idea is nonsense. Basil said, 'Now, if you could
only care a little, and make up your mind to wait for the love, we
could be married at once, because I believe it's still easy to do
these things quickly in Scotland.' But I told him _I_ didn't feel
as if I could, even to please Barbara, though I liked him very
much. And I began to think that, after all, I should have to go
back to Carlisle and beg Grandma to take me in, when who should
come teuf-teufing up to the hotel but Mr. Somerled in the darling
Gray Dragon. I could have cried with joy. It was like a miracle,
because, though I thought he might come along some time, I wasn't
expecting him then, any more than you would expect manna to fall in
1912 just because you happened to be hungry and lost.
You will be surprised perhaps at my feeling that I was saved from
Basil and Grandma simply because Mr. Somerled happened to turn up
at our hotel in his motor-car. But I haven't told you all yet. He
wasn't alone. He had collected Duncan MacDonald and Miss MacDonald,
and he'd come to Ballachulish looking for us. I must confess to you
now that I wrote to him twice or three times, which was only
polite, as he'd been so kind about rescuing me before. And you
hadn't forbidden me to write. One of the things I told him in a
letter was about the visit to Mrs. Payne the Vannecks might be
making: and it occurred to him that some such complication as this
might arise. He thought if Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck wanted to go to the
Round House, it would be very nice for me to join my cousins (of
course the MacDonalds are my cousins) until you are ready for me to
come back to you. Or else I could go and stay at Dunelin Castle at
Dhrum, for they are willing to visit him there if I do. It has been
let to him for years, you know. As the MacDonalds are poor he was
afraid, if he didn't take the castle, they might let or even sell
it to some vulgar rich person who would spoil the island he loves.
Now he may buy it himself: for Duncan MacDonald has no son, and the
daughter is so plain and old that she can't possibly marry. Won't
it be good to have the castle still belonging to a MacDonald? And
it is so romantic that it should be Ian Somerled MacDonald, whom
Duncan used to despise. But perhaps you've never heard that story?
Now, both the father and daughter are sweet to 'their dear