The Heather-Moon Part 28

(I didn't let my eyes twinkle, or my face do that weird thing, "break into a smile"; but Jack Morrison told me that Miss MacDonald had "set her cap at the great Somerled," and torn it off and stamped on it in rage because--this is Jack's slang--Sir S. "wasn't taking any.")

--"Having failed to bring off a match or two, has settled down into old-maidhood. She's an enthusiastic suffragette, and hates living out of London. The Mac of D. considers his club his castle, or a good deal better; and as he's the last of the line--not a male heir, no matter how distant--he can do as he likes with his ancestral stronghold. You know, I suppose, your father was born at Dunelin Castle?'

"Yes," I said. "I wish I'd been born there, instead of at Hillard House."

"So do I wish it. If you had been, I should have no hesitation in--er--in building the gallery round the library wall."

"You think you really will decide to buy the castle?" I asked breathlessly.

"Sometimes I think so. At other times I think, _Qui bono?_ I say to myself that I shall never have a home, or an incentive for settling down. But come along and look at Sir Walter's treasures before any one else appears."

"Where's Mrs. West?" I asked involuntarily.

"She's annexed your bodyguard for the moment--do you mind?--appealed to their innate love of horrors by showing them the picture of Queen Mary's head, painted an hour after her death by a brother of Margaret Cawood, her attendant. Suddenly I felt that, if Basil could spare you to me for ten minutes, I should like to be the one to show you a few things--the things I loved best when I came from Edinburgh to Abbotsford with a bit of the first money I ever earned by my brush."

I turned on him, opening my eyes wide. "Basil spare me!" I echoed scornfully. "I'm not his princess, even if you don't want me for yours."

"I do want you. But----"

"Oh, here he comes!" I whispered, shrill as a cricket. "Take me to see _your_ things, quickly."

So we ran away from Basil, and I had one of the happiest hours I have ever lived through; although the sight of Sir Walter's neat clothes in the gla.s.s case--the thick-soled boots, the broad-brimmed hat that covered his thoughts, the coat that covered his heart--brought tears to my eyes.

Next best, I liked the bit of Queen Mary's dress, the pocket-book worked by Flora MacDonald, Prince Charlie's "Quaich"--the cup with the gla.s.s bottom to guard the drinker against surprises--the ivory miniatures Sir Walter and his French bride exchanged, and the Rob Roy relics. Perhaps it is odd, but they were the very things Sir S. had remembered most affectionately. Last of all he showed me a toadstone amulet set in silver, a charm to prevent and ward off the spells of fairies. "If I could have had a thing like this to carry about with me in my motor-car," he said, "I should perhaps have been safe. But it's too late now."

He smiled at me with that whimsical yet kind smile which is the only sort he ever gives me since Mrs. West and Basil and the boys came.

Before their day, there was a different look in his eyes. I can't tell what that difference was, but I liked the old look a thousand times better than the new, which makes me feel I may as well go into a convent. Not that I intend to do so!

Just then Basil came to say that his sister and the Vannecks were going, as Aline was tired; and would Sir S. tell her what time we were to see the Abbey. Basil and I were left together--quite as usual, lately. He made some rather nice poetical remarks about the house at Abbotsford: how marvellously it expressed the personality and tendency of Sir Walter's mind; and how it seemed to him that here was the true heart of Scotland embalmed in spices and laid in a shrine, just as Robert Bruce's heart lies at Melrose. I hardly listened, though, for I was wondering so much what Sir S. would have gone on to say about the amulet if Basil had let us alone a minute longer. But fairy fancies were in the air, in one form or other. As we walked up the narrow path which would bring us to the motor, Basil told me a dream he'd had the night before. "I thought,"

he said, "that I was a humble reincarnation of Thomas Ecildoune--Thomas the Rhymer--and that I was walking in the Rhymer's Glen--it isn't far out of this neighbourhood, you know--when a Vision in a magic motor-car came sprinting down the steep curve of a rainbow. In front of my feet, the Vision contrived to stop the car, or in another second it would have run over me. Out she stepped and announced that she was the Queen of the Fays, whom I would remember meeting before in my last incarnation, in the same place. Strange to say, she looked exactly like you--and I must add, she acted exactly as you do."

"Why, what was it she did?" I couldn't help wanting to know.

"She heartlessly vanished, just as I began to hope she might remain and become my muse. You always vanish--and generally with another man."

We both laughed, and were laughing still when we came up with Mrs. James and Mrs. Vanneck, Mrs. West and Sir S., who were ahead of us with the others.

It had to be sunset and moonlight together for Melrose Abbey, for the heather moon was still too young to be allowed by Mother Earth to sit up late, all alone in the sky. This was not the "pale moonlight" Sir Walter wrote of, and looked to for inspiration in his "Lay of the Last Minstrel," but a light of silvered rose which seemed made for love and joy. I thought, if an alchemist or magician should pour melted gold and silver together in a rose-coloured gla.s.s, and hold it up to the sun, it would give out a light like this. It might have been an elixir of life, for it gave back the Abbey's youth, and more than its youthful beauty.

The bullet-shattered stone turned to blocks of pink and golden topaz, and each carving stood out clear, rimmed with sapphire shadow, as we wandered round the cruciform Gothic ruin, our feet noiseless on the faded velvet of the gra.s.s. Even in the darkest shadow there lay a ruby flush, like a glow of fire under a thick film of ash; but inside the Abbey was a soft, gray gloom, as if evening hid in the ruins waiting its time to come out. The Trinity window, the Calvary window, the window with the Crown of Thorns, and the east window in the chancel, which Sir Walter loved best, were all sketched against the sky in tracery of sepia and burnt amber, as I heard Sir S. saying to Mrs. West. And though I shouldn't have known what colours to use, because I'm not an artist, I could see that the tall stone shafts were like slender-trunked trees crowned with high cl.u.s.ters of branches, as in pictures of desert palms.

I wondered if the men who carved the stone had travelled in the East and had seen palm trees rising from pale sand, black against a paler sky.

And I wondered, too, if queer knots and fantastic holes in the gray trunks of oak had not put into men's minds the first idea of gargoyles.

Sir S. and Basil, who have been almost everywhere, agreed that they had seldom seen such marvellous detail of carving, so many whimsically planned and exquisitely carried out irregularities, or such lovely, well-preserved sandstone. That quarry which gave the material for Melrose and Dryburgh was a treasure-mine, and even the Romans knew and valued it. I was quite glad to find those two-agreeing about something, because ever since Basil joined us they have differed politely over nearly every subject that came up.

We had been deeply occupied with Michael Scott's supposed grave, and the story of the "dark magic" by which he divided into three, Eildon Hill, in whose caverns Arthur and his warriors still sleep their enchanted sleep; and so, when some strangers approached us, we didn't even look up. A very intelligent custodian, who has written a book about the Abbey, was showing us round at that moment, and telling things about Sir Ralph Evers, whom the Douglases killed for revenge, on Ancrum Moor, and all about the pillar with the "curly green capital." He had saved the Douglas Heart for the last, as the crowning glory in the history of Melrose; but when we'd done some sort of justice to everything else, he marched us into the presbytery where the Heart is buried, and where, according to his theory, it is commemorated in the carved stone tracery of the window.

A man with his back to us turned as we appeared, and I interrupted the custodian's learned discourse by crying out the name most sacred in the Abbey. "Mr. Douglas!" I exclaimed; for it was he--the Douglas soldier-man who was so kind, taking us all round the castle at Carlisle.

He said we might meet at Edinburgh, as he was soon to have leave, and intended to visit relatives there, but it was a surprise coming on him in the shrine of his ancestors.

I thought, of course, his arriving at that minute was an extraordinary coincidence; but when Sir S. shook hands, and asked in a matter-of-fact tone, "How is it we meet here?" he confessed, as if half ashamed, that it wasn't exactly an accident. "You see, I often come to Melrose for a look round if I'm in Scotland on leave," he said, "and I saw in the paper yesterday that you were motoring in this neighbourhood, expecting to call at Dryburgh and Melrose before Edinburgh."

"Ah, yes--that interview Aline gave a journalist acquaintance of mine at Dumfries," I heard George Vanneck murmur to Basil, who looked rather cross.

"I arrived at the hotel just after you'd been there to leave your luggage and sign names in the visitors' book," Donald Douglas went on.

"They said you were motoring over to Abbotsford, and would come back to see the Abbey later; so it occurred to me, if I strolled over about this time, we might run across each other."

"Quite so," remarked Sir S.; an expression I detest, it sounds so like filing iron, especially as he said it then. However, the soldier-man didn't appear to mind in the least that the Great Somerled was stiff and unsympathetic. He attached himself to me, as I was his only other real acquaintance, except Mrs. James, in the party; and of course, as he reminded me, we were very old friends--as old as the day we first saw each other in the street at Carlisle, years and years ago.

He seemed to know as much as the custodian about Melrose and the Douglas Heart--which was natural, as he so values everything connected with his family name. He told me all about the good Sir James Douglas: how King Robert Bruce when dying begged his friend to take his heart to the Holy Land, and bury it where he had wished to go and fight for Christendom as an expiation for killing the Red Comyn. It was as good as a chapter out of a novel to hear how the Douglas got permission from the new king to be gone seven years on his great adventure; how he heard on his way to Jerusalem that King Alfonso of Spain was fighting the Saracens at Granada, and couldn't resist offering his help, being sure that Robert Bruce would have done the same; how in battle against Osmyn, the Saracen king, he was hard pressed, and taking the casket with Brace's heart in it from over his own heart, he threw it far ahead of him in the enemy's ranks, shouting, "Pa.s.s first in fight, as thou wert ever wont. Douglas will follow thee or die!" And how he did both follow and die, but falling only when he had killed many Moslems and hewed his way through their bodies to where the heart lay.

"That's the old story of the Douglas Heart," said the soldier-man, "and there's a new story of the Douglas Heart I hope you'll let me tell you some day before long, because it's even more interesting--to me."

"Why, then, I expect it will be to me too," said I politely, "so why not tell it me now, in Melrose Abbey, the place of all places?"

He looked at me in an odd way, and said, "Yes, it _is_ the place of all places; but I'm afraid it's a little too early in the day----"

Just then Basil came up to announce that Mrs. James had sent him to fetch me, as we must return to the hotel and dress.

"Too bad!" I exclaimed. But as Sir S. was not far off I called to him, "Don't you think we may come back here again after dinner?"

"Certainly, if you like," he answered. "Although the moon will have gone."

"That doesn't matter," said I; "there will be stars. Mr. Douglas has a _new_ story of the Douglas Heart to tell me, which he thinks is even more interesting than the old, and it ought to be told in the Abbey."

When I explained this, Donald Douglas turned bright scarlet, and all three of the Vannecks burst out laughing, which I thought extremely rude and uncalled for. But Sir S. looked as solemn as a judge.

"No doubt he's right about it's being more interesting, and quite as credible," said he.

I don't know whether Mr. Douglas would have asked Mrs. James and me to walk over to the Abbey with him after dinner or not, if the weather had kept fine, but a thunder shower came up and it poured. So, although I teased him again to tell me the new story, when everybody but Mrs. James and he and I were playing bridge in our private sitting-room, he refused. "I'll wait till Edinburgh," he said, "if you'll let me see you there."

I had to explain that I didn't know where I should stay in Edinburgh, as that would depend upon my mother, to whom Mr. Somerled MacDonald was taking me.

"And Somerled himself, and the others?" he asked.

"Oh, they're going on," said I, "leaving me behind."

He looked delighted; so perhaps he had not forgiven the Vannecks for laughing.

BOOK III

BASIL'S PLOT AND "MRS. BAL"