The Heather-Moon
My knees trembled so that I could scarcely walk. Basil noticed it, and
insisted on my taking his arm. "It's because she has been sitting still
in the car so long," Mrs. West said to him hastily. "I am often like
that after a day's motoring."
"You're awfully pale," said Basil, staring at me anxiously. "You won't
faint or anything, will you?"
"Oh, no," I said. "I am quite well." I tried to speak naturally, but my
voice sounded as if it were some one else's, miles away. And for a
minute, after entering the little room that looked so familiar, I was
afraid that I might cry or be somehow stupid.
"Now," said Basil, "all we have to do is to state before these witnesses
that we take one another in marriage. Isn't that it?" he asked, turning
to the old man, who in the costume brought by the photographers, had
performed the ceremony over me and my knight.
"Yes, sir, that is all there is to it," he replied; but as he spoke he
was peering curiously at me. "That's all there is to what we call an
irregular marriage in Scotland, such as this is going to be. When I say
'irregular,' you mustn't think anything wrong. It's as legal as the kind
with banns. If you want to register your marriage, sir, you must make
application to the sheriff of the county; but it's just as binding and
legal without."
"That is what I understood," said Basil. "But, of course, I shall have
it registered. Are you ready, Barrie?"
"Excuse me the liberty, sir," broke in the old man, "but I think this
will be the young leddy who was done for the Cinema? I know her by her
hair. I'm not so sure, though, that I recognize you, sir, or----"
"No, no, it wasn't I. That was her guardian," Basil returned hurriedly.
"Now, Barrie, if you're ready----"
"Yes, I'm ready----" I began. I found that I could speak only in a
whisper. Or perhaps it was the whirr of a passing motor outside which
drowned my voice.
"Well then, come, dearest child, and stand here by me. Give me your
hand----Is anything the matter?"
I forgot to answer, the sound of that car out there was so like the
well-remembered purr of the Gray Dragon. But I seemed always to be
hearing a kind of undertone of Dragon music. Often I had turned my head
as we came from Oban, to see if some car gaining on us from behind were
the Gray Dragon. It never was; and this would not be. But it was not
passing after all. It was stopping near the house--as near as
Blunderbore would allow.
"Is anything the matter?" I heard the words more clearly the second time
he spoke.
"No," I said. "There is nothing----"
He took my hand, which was hanging by my side, for I had forgotten to
give it when he asked. His felt very hot to the touch, so mine must have
been cold. He pressed it warmly, and his eyes called to mine. There was
no light in the room, for it was not needed yet, and I could see that
his face was white. I wished above all things to pull my hand away from
him.
"I, Basil, take thee, Barribel----" he began formally.
"I forbid this marriage. It mustn't go on," said a voice at the door. It
sounded like the voice of my knight: but everything was so dream-like
and unreal that I thought the voice was part of the unreality. It could
not be his.
But it was. He came forward, covered with dust from head to foot, as if
he had been driving far and fast.
"Barribel MacDonald is already my wife," he said.
He took my hand away from Basil, who was so astounded that for an
instant he did not resist. But in another second a flood of rage seemed
to sweep over him, giving him strength and presence of mind.
"That's not true, and you know it!" he exclaimed, while Mrs. West stood
still as a statue, looking suddenly years older than before. "Barrie,
come to me."
But my knight would not let me go. He grasped my hand so tightly that it
hurt. I felt as if my fingers would break in his, and for just that
moment I was deliriously happy, until I remembered, with a sharp pain
like an icicle in my heart, that he loved Mrs. West.
"It _is_ true," he said. "We went through the marriage ceremony here,
three weeks ago, she and I, as this man will tell you. I am a Scot, and
I claim her as my wife by the law of Scotland, unless she will swear to
me now, before God, that she loves you and wants you for her husband. If
she can swear that, I will take steps to release her. What do you say,
Barrie?"
"I--I _like_ Basil very much," I stammered. "I was willing--I am
willing--to marry him."
"I didn't ask if you liked, but if you loved, him. Do you?"
"I--I want to marry him," I exclaimed, strength flowing into me as I
thought of Mrs. West. "Don't be afraid, Mr. Somerled. I've troubled you
enough. Even if we really are married, I would rather die than hold you.
I know everything--how it was about me you quarrelled with _her_. But
I've spoiled only a few weeks of your life. I won't spoil the rest. It
is she who ought to be your wife, not I."
"Who has said that to you?" he asked.
"It is her own idea!" Mrs. West cried.
"Then it is a very foolish idea," said he. "Mrs. West and I never had
it. If you love Basil Norman, Barrie, I won't stand in your way. But if
you don't love him, by heaven he shan't take you from me."
"There's no question of taking her from you. She doesn't belong to you,"
Basil flung back at him. "For a marriage to be legal one of the persons
concerned must have lived in Scotland for twenty-one days----"
"I lived in Scotland seventeen years."
"But not directly before that foolish business here----"
"I have never been without a holding in Scotland. Dunelin Castle has
been mine by lease for years. Now it's mine by right of ownership.
Whether our marriage was legal or not will have to be settled by
Scottish Law before the girl can marry any one else, and I shall fight
in the courts for my rights if you dispute them."
"Are you going to throw me over, Barrie?" Basil asked.
"You shall not put it to her like that!" said my knight. "Barrie, you
haven't answered my question. Do you love him?"
"No," I faltered. I could not lie.
"Do you love me?"
"You're cruel to ask me that, when you----"
"When you ought to have seen long ago, that I was at your feet, that I
was mad for you, that you were my one thought. I tried not to be a brute
as well as a fool, so I stood aside and gave all the other men who were
younger, and perhaps worthier, their chance. If you had loved anybody
else I'd have let you alone. But I don't think one of those men made
good. Do you love me, Barrie? Answer me now, as if we were alone
together?"
"Yes," I whispered.
He caught me in his arms, and kissed me on the mouth, holding me close
against his breast.
"Then," he said, "I am your husband. Are you my wife? I ask you before
these witnesses, who know us both."
"I am your wife," I repeated after him.
"This time," he exclaimed, "we are safely married, and not all the world
can part us now."
Basil and Aline went away before we did. Aline said she was going to
Glasgow, to tell Barbara how I had treated them, and to see the man she
was engaged to marry: that it was all a mistake, if not a deliberate
falsehood on my part, about her thinking Ian cared for her. Basil went
with her, not saying anything at all, except:
"Good-bye, Barrie. Some day perhaps you'll understand and forgive me. I
always had a presentiment that I shouldn't be able to bring it off at
the last; that Somerled would cut in and snatch you away from me."
Ian suggested taking me to Carlisle, only eight miles away, to stay with
Grandma until we could have a more conventional wedding. But when I
said, "_Aren't_ we really and truly married, then?" in a frightened
voice, he said, "Of course we are, my darling child--married as fast as
if by book and bell. Nothing can part us. I shall never let you go out
of my sight for five minutes after this--unless you want to go."
"But I don't," I said. And a sudden thought came to me. I told him I
wished he would take me to Sweetheart Abbey. If it had been appropriate
to spend the first night of the heather moon there, as Mrs. James had
said, it would be still more appropriate to spend the first night of the
honeymoon.
We bade the old man of the house good-bye and he shook hands with us
both. Ian gave him something which made him exclaim, "I thank you
kindly, indeed, sir! And I must say, if you'll excuse the liberty, I
never wanted the other gentleman to get her, sir. I felt in my bones
there was something wrong, so I kept on asking questions to delay the
thing. If I hadn't done that, it would all have been fixed up before you
came along."
"If it had been, I should have taken her away from him, anyhow," said
Ian, "because she was my wife, and she couldn't have been his."
"Not _exactly_ your wife, sir," the old man tried to explain, taking him
literally. "But----"
"If not in law she was in heart, and she was meant for me from the
beginning of time," said Ian.
Then we went out to the dear Gray Dragon, which was white with dust, and
so was dear Vedder.
"It's all right," Ian said to the stolid-looking fellow; and Vedder
answered, "Hurrah to heaven, sir!" which was a very queer expression,
but I liked it, and loved him for it. Basil used to say that chauffeurs
are a strange new race of men, but I think they are splendid. I hoped
that Ian would double Vedder's wages, and afterward he did.
We drove fast to Sweetheart Abbey, with the heather moon in the east, a
sweet, pale, thin-cheeked moon, past her prime of youth, but more
beautiful and kind than ever. As we flew along the empty road, the Gray
Dragon purring with joy in our joy, rabbits ran ahead of us, like tiny
messengers impatient to tell the good news of what had happened. Our
big, white headlight turned them into bouncing, gray balls, and there
were dozens of them, tearing along just in front of us sometimes, but we
would not have killed or hurt one for its weight in gold.
Ian took for us at the inn the very rooms he had taken before for Mrs.
James and me; and in his arms, with no lamplight but the heather moon
smiling through the window at us, I told him about my dream of his
bringing me the locked ebony and silver box, which could be opened only
with the rainbow key.
"It was a true dream, my darling," he said. "My heart was locked up in a
box for many years, and nobody but you could have opened it, for you are
_you_, and you have the key of the rainbow in your little hands. Never
will the box be locked again. Now my heart doesn't need, doesn't want a
box, because it is forever in your keeping."
There, at Sweetheart Abbey, in the little inn where I first began to ask
myself if Ian were not the One Man beside whom all others were shadows,
we told each other things and explained things that had seemed
mysterious.
I told him how I had worshipped him from the beginning, and couldn't
help going on to care more and more, though I feared that he liked Mrs.
West, and thought of me only as a child. "But I wasn't a child," I said.
"From the first minute I loved you I was a woman."
"You must have been a baby, or you would never have thought for a second
that I or any man could remember Mrs. West's existence when you were
there," he said scornfully. But as he was holding me very tightly in his
arms, the scorn did not hurt. "How you could believe her, when she told
you that what I did for you was from duty, I can't conceive. If you were
the heroine of one of Basil's novels there might be some excuse for you.
Heroines of stories always believe any wild thing the villain or
villainess chooses to tell them, but a real girl, with brains and eyes
and at least some common sense----"
"Do you think when you're in love your common sense can stay on top?" I
asked. "It seemed too good to be true that you could love me, and she