The Heather-Moon Part 14

I explained everything, talking so fast that I got out of breath, while Mr. Somerled walked round the room looking at the curiosities. I was glad no customers came in to interrupt; but luckily there wasn't much danger at that hour, as it wasn't yet half-past two, and people had scarcely finished their luncheons. As I talked, she gave little exclamations almost like the cooing of a dove; and the most desperate thing in our story seemed to be, in her opinion, the fact that we hadn't lunched.

She insisted on giving us eggs and apple-tart and coffee in her own dining-room, and she let us come into the kitchen and help cook. Mr.

Somerled looked quite young and boyish. We all three laughed a good deal. Not a word did Mr. Somerled say about my going to Edinburgh or the chaperon business until we'd finished our picnic meal, and he had selected several of the best and most expensive things in the shop for himself. After that, how could Mrs. James refuse him what he called "a great favour" even if she'd wished to say no, which she didn't. On the contrary, she was enchanted. Everything had worked together to make her going possible. The curate had gone off for a holiday, giving her permission to use his two rooms if she liked. I could have them till we started; and she would ask a friend from next door to attend to the shop, a nice girl who often helped her, if she were ill or had to go away on a "curiosity quest." "Just think!" she exclaimed, "I've never been to Scotland, though it's only eight miles distant, and I've pined to go all my life. You'll find that I've a good book-knowledge of the country, if that's any use, for my dear husband's favourite pastime has been the study of history. Since he--left Carlisle, I've devoted much time to following his researches."

The long words do come so nicely from her pretty little mouth, and she shapes them with such care, that they seem to issue forth one by one like neatly formed birds being let out of a cage. She is making a speciality of p.r.o.nunciation, and what she sometimes speaks of as "refined wording." She was a farmer's daughter in Devons.h.i.+re.

It was arranged that the girl from next door should be called in at once, in order that Mrs. James and I might go and buy things. I was rich on the proceeds of the brooch; for Mr. Somerled counted out the rest of the money on the parlour table; and Mrs. James abetted him in saying that fifty pounds was not a penny too much to lend on such a treasure.

But it does seem wonderful! Mrs. James herself must have felt flush after making such good sales, and her eyes lit at the thought of a motor hat and coat--they seemed exciting purchases. But when Mr. Somerled mentioned the fact that mother is one of the best-dressed women in the world, the little woman looked frightened. "I shan't dare take the responsibility of choosing an outfit for the child, then," said she nervously. (I do wish people wouldn't call me "child," though it's nicer from Mrs. James than Mrs. West!) "Supposing she shouldn't make the correct impression? Won't you be persuaded to help us, sir, with your advice about the most important articles?"

Somehow I feel that Mr. Somerled hates "sir" as much as I hate "child."

I expected him to make an excuse, that he knew nothing about such things--or "articles," according to Mrs. James. But instead, he snapped at the suggestion and looked as pleased as Punch. I suppose he doesn't want me to be a fright and disgrace his car on the journey.

When Miss Hubbell had come in from the next house, smelling of some lovely sort of jam which she and her mother had been making, off we three went in the gray automobile, Mrs. James trying not to look self-conscious and proud, nor to give little jumps and gasps when she thought we were going to run over creatures.

It is many years since she has been to London. I think she was there on her wedding trip and never since: and besides that expedition, Exeter and Carlisle are her two largest cities: but, in order to impress the great artist, she patronized Carlisle, saying we "mustn't hope for London shops." I longed to catch his eye, because I'm sure he sees everything that is funny; but it would have been horrid to laugh at the kind darling, trying to be a woman of the world.

In the end, it was Mr. Somerled and I who chose everything, even Mrs.

James's motor coat and hat, for she was too timid to decide; and if she had decided, it would have been to select all the wrong things. I had to get my dresses ready-made, because of starting for Scotland next morning, and it was funny to see how difficult Mr. Somerled was to please. One would have thought he took a real interest in my clothes; but of course it was owing to his artistic nature. We found a blue serge--I wouldn't have believed, after my deadly experience, that blue serge could be so pretty--and a coat and skirt of creamy cloth; and an evening frock of white chiffon, I think the girl called it. Actually it has short sleeves above my elbows, and quite a low neck, that shows where my collar-bone used to be when I was thinner than I am now. It seems an epoch to have a dress like that. It was Mr. Somerled who picked it out from among others, and insisted on my having it, though, simple as it looked, it was terribly expensive. Mrs. James thought I couldn't afford it, as I had so many things to do with my fifty pounds, but Mr.

Somerled brushed aside her objections in that determined way he has even in little things. He said that it would be money in his pocket, as an artist, to paint me in this gown; and that I must sit for him in it. He would call his picture "The Girl in the White Dress"; and as he'd show it in London and New York and get a big price, of course he must be allowed to pay for the dress. Mrs. James seemed doubtful about the propriety, but he drew his black eyebrows together, and that made her instantly quite sure he must be right. When she'd agreed to my having the dress on those terms, she couldn't--as he said--stick at a mere hat, so he bought me a lovely one to wear with the creamy cloth. He suggested that I should keep it in the "tire box" while motoring--a huge round thing on the top of the car.

"It is just like having a kind uncle, isn't it, my dear?" asked Mrs.

James. But I didn't feel that Mr. Somerled was the sort of man I could _ever_ think of as a kind uncle, and I said so before I'd stopped to wonder if it sounded rude. Luckily he didn't seem offended.

I am writing this in the curate's sitting-room upstairs in Mrs. James's house. It is night, and we are to start to-morrow morning very early, because I happened to mention that I'd never seen the inside of Carlisle Castle, or put my nose into the Cathedral. Grandma does not approve of cathedrals, and their being historic makes no difference. Mr. Somerled said that we could visit both, and then "slip over the border." Oh, that border! How I have thought of it, as if it were the door of Romance; and so it is, because it is the door of Scotland. I am afraid it must be a dream that I shall cross at last, to see the glories on the other side, and find the lovely lady who to me is Queen of all Romance--my mother.

Still, I've pinched myself several times, and instead of waking up in my old room at Hillard House each time I've found myself with my eyes staring wide open, in the curate's room, which has a lot of books in it and a smell of tobacco smoke, and on the mantelpiece Mrs. James's wedding wreath as an ornament under a gla.s.s case.

Mr. Somerled has gone to a hotel; but he stayed to supper with us, and Mrs. James brought out all her nicest things. It was much pleasanter than supper last night at Moorhill Farm, though Mrs. West had lovely things to eat. I am glad I shall never see Moore again! But I should like to see Mr. Norman. I could feel toward him as if he were a brother.

But I don't know what to say about my feeling toward Mr. Somerled. I think of him as of a knight, come to the rescue of a forlorn damsel in an enchanted forest. After delivering the damsel from one dragon--Grandma--he is going to take her away with another quite different sort of a dragon; a well-trained, winged dragon, which people who don't know any better believe to be only a motor-car.

II

I don't know how I dared with such a man, but I talked foolish fairy talk to Mr. Somerled, _alias_ the Knight, this morning, and he answered gravely in the same language. I should be doing him a great service, he said, if I could lead him back to fairyland, because he used to know the way, but had lost it long ago. He had given up the hope of finding it again, and until the other day had feared that all the fairies were dead.

"If you find fairyland, it ought to be while the heather moon s.h.i.+nes," I told him. "But I shan't have much time to help you look for it, because in five days you'll be leaving me with mother, and travelling on alone.

You must search for the key to the rainbow wherever you go; because, you know, it might be _anywhere_, and the light of the heather moon would show it gleaming in the gra.s.s, or under a flower, or even in the middle of the road before your eyes."

He looked at me in an odd, almost wistful way, and I couldn't look away from him, though I wanted to, for it was as if he were reading my inmost Me--using my eyes for windows, of which I couldn't draw the curtains.

"_You_ might find the key, if you haven't got it already," he said.

"Anyhow, I can't find it without your help, But no matter. Perhaps I shouldn't know what to do with it if I did, now I've grown old and disillusioned."

Then I answered, because I couldn't help it under the spell of his eyes.

"You're not old or disillusioned. You're a Knight: and knights who rescue damsels are always young and brave."

Before I saw him, if any one had told me a person of over thirty was not middle-aged, I should have thought it nonsense. But now I see that even _thirty-four_ is not old. It seems exactly the right age for a man.

"If you dub me Knight, I christen you Princess," said he, laughing as if embarra.s.sed, yet pleased. "Because, I confess I wandered near enough to the border last night, to think of you as a princess who'd been shut up in a gla.s.s retort, as all really nice princesses were in my day, in fairyland. Now the retort has been opened, though the princess believed it to be hermetically sealed----"

"It was the knight who opened it!" I interrupted him. "But did you _really_ go near to the border?"

"The border of fairyland."

"Oh! I meant Scotland. But, after all, to me it seems much the same thing. Doesn't it to you?"

"I haven't thought of it so for a good many years," he said. "Yet it might be----"

I lost the rest, because Mrs. James came in, ready to start. We had been standing together in the little sitting-room at the back of the house while she gave last directions to Miss Hubbell. And I had on my new serge, of course, with a blouse more fit for an angel than Barrie MacDonald; and a gray coat and a gray hood with a long gray veil floating out from it--all the same gray as the car, and chosen to match.

I couldn't help thinking, when I put on the hood before the curate's looking-gla.s.s, that in spite of a green crack across my face and one purple splash on my eye (it's a very antique gla.s.s, not used to girls'

complexions) I really wasn't so bad. Oh, if only mother is pleased! But of course all mothers must be pleased with their children. One reads a great deal in books about mother's love.

We bought two small trunks yesterday, one for Mrs. James and one for me, of the same gray colour as our cloaks, both made especially for a motor-car: and Mr. Somerled has a gray trunk too, smaller than mine, also a thing he calls a suit-case. This morning he brought us each a present of a little gray handbag, fitted with brushes and combs and a mirror, and tiny bottles for eau-de-cologne. My fittings look like gold, though I suppose of course they are only gilded; and Mrs. James's are silver. She thought it would hurt his feelings if we refused to accept his presents, though she was brought up to believe that a lady must never take anything from a gentleman except books, sweets, and flowers.

However, she says she has often found it difficult to conduct life according to rules of etiquette, as there are so many complications they've forgotten to put in.

It was only half-past eight when we started, for we wanted to see the Cathedral and the Castle. We were going to the Cathedral first, and on the way we had to pa.s.s a big motor garage which has always made my heart beat just to see, whenever Heppie and I have come to town shopping. I used to wonder what it would be like to sail through the wide doorway in a car of my own. Poor me, in my "gla.s.s retort," with little chance, it seemed, of escaping from the dragon to travel in any sort of mobile except the pillow-mobile into which I used often, to jump at night, and flash away to far-off countries of dreamland.

Now, poking its large nose out of that garage was a gray motor (but not so nice a gray as ours) conducted by a wisp of a chauffeur. He was driving two pa.s.sengers, and I bounced on the springy back seat of our car with surprise as I recognized them. Down went my head mechanically in as polite a bow as if I hadn't been turned out of her house by Mrs.

West, though, when I realized what I was doing, I was afraid she might pretend not to know me. It must make one feel such a worm to be ignored when one has just grinned and ducked! But I needn't have feared. Mr.

Norman took off his cap as impressively as if I were really the princess of the knight's fairy dream; and Mrs. West bowed, with a sweet, sad look first at Mr. Somerled, then finis.h.i.+ng up with me--just the reproachful, yet resigned martyr-look a queen ought to give a crowd of rebellious subjects on her way to the scaffold where their cruelty had sent her.

Of course, if I had to show this to Mr. Norman, and get him to criticise my writing as he offered to do, I couldn't put in such things; so perhaps it's as well I shall have to worry on alone.

Mr. Somerled, who was driving our car (with Vedder by his side, tooting a musical horn), took off his cap as beautifully as Mr. Norman did, without upsetting the steering, though there seemed to be a hundred things and creatures of all descriptions in front of the motor's big bright nose at that particular moment. I'd never realized until then what a crowded, busy place Carlisle is; because it seems that you have a different set of emotions and impressions especially for use in motor-cars, and you _have_ to use them there, whether you like or not. I suppose they lay quiescent in people for thousands of years, between the epoch of exciting prehistoric beasts and automobiles; but now they come into play often enough to make up for lost time. Not that I was afraid in the car, even at first: only it did seem as if all the things that moved on the face of the earth were aiming directly at us, to say nothing of what we ourselves were doing to them. Luckily for me, I trusted Mr. Somerled; and perhaps Mrs. James hadn't quite arrived at that blissful state, or else she was naturally more timid, for she held on so fast to the arm of the seat that she tore a glove, and had a strained expression about her eyes and nostrils, though she beamed in a painstaking way whenever she caught me looking at her.

"Who is that pretty blond lady and the handsome dark young man you just bowed to?" she asked, when we had pa.s.sed the gray car that was like a bad copy of ours.

I told her that the man was Mr. Basil Norman and the lady was Mrs. West, who had quarrelled with Mr. Somerled yesterday for some reason he wouldn't explain, but probably because she couldn't be bothered with me.

"Poor thing, she looked ready to cry!" sighed Mrs. James. "By this time, I dare say, she's sorry for what she did, and praying for a chance to make up."

It would be Christian to pray for it too; but if making up means having her in this car, I should have to pound the prayer into my heart like a nail.

There was no luggage in the other car, so I guessed that they were trying it, to see whether they might like to hire it for their trip.

And, in spite of Mr. Norman being so kind and different from his sister, I couldn't help hoping that they might begin with another part of Scotland from ours.

I kept on thinking of them as we wound through the traffic, though dear Mrs. James continued to talk in an approving way, suited to my intelligence, about Carlisle, and what a wonderful place it was, and how proud we ought to be of it. How wide and well-built the new streets were, and how interesting the old ones! How good for the complexion were the winds that blew from the great moorland s.p.a.ces beyond the town! I hadn't thought much about all that myself, but certainly Carlisle is romantic as a city, because in history you see how it has always been a solid bulwark of the English, against which tides of invasion dashed themselves in vain--a sort of watch-tower, whence England gazed out across the border where danger lay in wait. I can't help turning my mind to the romantic side of things, though it may be silly; but, after all, it's just as real as the other side. Both are _there_, and you can choose which you like to have for your own, as I said to Mr. Somerled.

By and by we came to the Cathedral. I had to confess that I'd never been in, but I didn't mention Grandma's prejudice against cathedrals. I'd never pined to see the inside as I should if the outside were tall and graceful and gray, instead of dumpy and red--an ochre-red colour which is interesting only when the sun s.h.i.+nes on it, or when wet and sparkling with rain, in the midst of its lovely old trees. I almost gasped with joy and surprise, however, when we entered, for the interior is wonderful. It is as if the builders had had in mind an allegory about a plain body and a glorious soul.

Who would have thought that Mr. Somerled would remember so much history of this northern country, after living, since he grew up, in America, and making fame and fortune there? Mrs. James thinks that he even talks like an American. She is a good judge, because more than half the customers of her curiosity shop are Americans, and they chat with her about all sorts of things. She reads her husband's history books, in order to give him an agreeable surprise when he comes back, and the knowledge she picks up is money in her pocket, because she can pour out floods of information upon inquiring tourists. When she's kindly told them all about the Romans in general and the Augustan Legion in particular, and the Museum, and William Rufus's Castle; about the Cathedral having been robbed of most of its nave to rebuild the city walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak out of her shop without buying something.

I loved the immense simplicity of that Norman nave, with its huge crumpled arches crushed into curving waves by the long-ago collapse of the foundations and the strain of centuries on the masonry. It was a startling contrast to go from the Norman part into the choir, all a ma.s.s of carving and decoration, with its vast east window of jewel-like thirteenth-century gla.s.s, which Mr. Somerled p.r.o.nounced finer even than the windows of York and Gloucester cathedrals.

It seems that, although he hasn't been in Scotland since he left seventeen years ago (vowing never to return until something or other happened), he has been in England several times meanwhile, and travelled all over Europe. He pretended that he wasn't at all excited about crossing the border after these many years' exile, but when I cried out that I couldn't believe him so commonplace and dull, he opened his eyes wide, as surprised as if I'd boxed his ears. Mrs. James whispered that I had been rude; and when I stopped to think, I realized how unlike Mrs.

West I had been. She is so gracious and complimentary to Mr. Somerled, never saying anything she thinks he might dislike. But he heard Mrs.

James's whisper and said, "You must let her alone, please, my Lady Chaperon, because I have a sort of idea she is going to dig me up by the roots, and hang me up to air, and altogether do me a lot of good in the end."