The Heather-Moon Part 30

"I shall go on--sooner or later," replied Somerled. "But--I shall have a look round Edinburgh first, and see what has happened to my old haunts."

I thought her face brightened.

"Aline and I must 'do' Edinburgh too, of course," said I.

She smiled, but as if she were thinking of something else. And it was then that suddenly, for the first time, I felt capable of developing into an able-bodied villain--in fact, committing any crime which could transfer from him to me the kind of look she had given Somerled.

"I must of course go back to Carlisle and my work, as soon as I have paid my respects to Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald," remarked Mrs. James.

"We'll talk of all that to-morrow," said Somerled, who, I suppose, engaged her at so much a thousand words--I mean, so much a day--as chaperon for his "ward." "Whatever happens, you must see Edinburgh while you're here. And besides, it's on the cards that I may be able to give you a pleasant little surprise before you leave Scotland. I rather hoped for details of it to-day; but there's nothing interesting in the mail they handed me at the desk" (he said this like a native-born American), "so we must have patience till to-morrow."

"A surprise!" echoed Mrs. James, looking quite pretty and young, as she surprisingly does sometimes. "Does Barrie know?"

"No," said Somerled. "Barrie doesn't know."

There was just time to go to our new rooms and make ourselves respectable for church, no light thing in Scotland. Aline and the Vannecks hadn't turned up yet, but, knowing them and knowing Blunderbore, I thought nothing strange of the delay. Aline's game was, of course, to make Somerled jealous of George Vanneck, her old and well-worn chattel, whom she at heart despises, and to seem not too eager for his (Somerled's) society, while I, attached to his party by special arrangement, could protect her interests--and my own.

Somerled had ordered Vedder to wait with the Dragon when the luggage had been taken down, and thus we saved ourselves some minutes which we should have lost in walking. We left the car as soon as possible, however, and plunged into the beauty and squalor of the High Street on foot. I annexed Barrie as a companion, and Somerled did not fight for her. Quietly he contented, or seemed to content, himself with Mrs. James, and my impression was confirmed that, whether he wanted Barrie or not, he was deliberately standing aside in my favour, giving me my "chance"--perhaps to test Barrie or me--or both. Who could tell? Not I. Somerled is hard to read, even for a professional character-vivisectionist.

"Are you too much excited, and taken up with thoughts of your mother, to care about all this?" I asked the girl.

She admitted that she was excited, and perhaps a little absent-minded; but "all this," as I called it, was too wonderful not to capture her interest in spite of everything.

"Think of Queen Mary and her four Maries, and Darnley, and Rizzio, and Bothwell, and John Knox pa.s.sing along as we pa.s.s now, on their way up to Holyrood?" said I.

"Yes. Oh, yes! I _do_ think of them," she answered obediently, her eyes straying into the shadows of wynd or close, or tracing out the detail of some carved gargoyle on an old facade.

"Only you think of yourself more----"

"Not myself exactly. But----"

"What then?"

"Well--one thinks of queer things in a place like this, full of romances and--and love stories. I was wondering----"

"Yes. Don't be afraid to tell me. We're fellow-authors, you know--brother and sister of the pen."

"That's it! Brother and sister, aren't we? How nice!"

"Of the pen," I amended hastily.

"Story writers must know all about love," she hesitated.

"We do," I encouraged her to go on.

"Then how, if you were writing a story (I'm thinking I may want to do one), would you make a girl sure whether she'd fallen in love with somebody?"

"I should make her," I answered cautiously, with an earthquake in my heart, "I should make her feel--er--a sort of electric thrill when he touched her, or looked into her eyes. I should make her feel that nothing was worth doing unless the man was with her."

"I know!" the girl murmured. "She would feel, wouldn't she, as if he _must_ be there--as if she just couldn't go on living if he weren't."

"That's it," I said. "You've described it graphically."

She regarded me with sudden suspicion. "Thank you very much," she replied primly. "I'll take your advice and have it like that in my story, if I ever write it. What a _wonderful_ old street this is! It's full of ghosts of kings and queens, and n.o.blemen and great ladies, and soldiers and robbers, every one of them more important than the people we see."

I couldn't tempt her back to the dangerous subject and soon I prudently ceased to try. But she had given me what I've heard described as a "nasty jar." Barrie MacDonald wouldn't have appealed to Basil Norman for a definition of love if she'd thought of him as a man and not a brother!

The side of me nearest my heart hated Somerled, marching on ahead, looking singularly attractive and gallant, much too interesting for a mere millionaire. And the side of me which has telephonic communication with my brain liked and approved of him, understanding how and why his personality made a strong appeal to most women. "You've had pretty well everything you've asked life to give you so far," I said to his back, "but this girl isn't your kind of girl. It's my sister you ought to want."

Suddenly, as we drew near to the crowned church of St. Giles--the old High Kirk--there came to our ears the skirling of pipes. Barrie started and stopped. Somerled glanced round quickly, his eyes keen. Would she prove her Highland blood? Would her heart beat for the pipes? That was the question in his look.

The girl was taken by surprise. We others knew what we had come for, and what to expect. She had no idea, except that she was being conducted decently to church.

At the first wail of the pipes the blood of her ancestors sprang to her face. She clasped her hands together, listening in silence to the barbaric music, her lips apart, her eyes aglow. And all this for the call of the pipes! Not yet had she caught her first glimpse of the pipers; but an instant later the tall figures came swinging proudly into sight, plaids swaying like tartan ta.s.sels, kilts moving with that wave-about-to-break rhythm given to their garments only by inspired pipers.

Even I felt a thrill as if each nerve in my body were a string drawn suddenly taut, but I was gloomily conscious that the Celtic souls of Somerled and Barrie felt more than I was capable of feeling, a mysterious something which drew the two together at this instant.

Physically, I stood between them, but I knew that my body was no obstacle to the lightning flash between their spirits.

Not a word said one of us as the goodly company of soldiers swept by in a rich-coloured cloud of their own music. But when all had disappeared into the church, Somerled and Barrie looked at each other. His eyes praised her for a braw and bonnie la.s.sie who had responded in fine style to her first-heard pipes, her first-seen kilt; yet his lips had nothing to say but, "Well, what do you think of them?"

"Think?" echoed Barrie. "I think it's perfectly unbelievable how any girl can ever marry a man who isn't a Highlander and has no right to the kilt!"

There was one for Somerled and one against me; but it only got my blood up. Many a girl says a certain thing, and does another when her time comes.

"If I were rich," she went on, "I'd live in a castle in the Highlands, and I'd have it _full_, simply _swarming_, with pipers, playing me awake in the morning and to sleep at night."

"I should like you to see your own castle of Dunelin at Dhrum. There are plenty of pipers there. I've kept them all on, meaning them to play for me some day," said Somerled, who had just then forgotten, I think, the existence of myself and Mrs. James, and failed to observe that in the distance all Miss Barribel MacDonald's missing young men were a.s.sembling, as if to the call of the blood--the soldier from Carlisle, who had collected a friend, and the American contingent of four.

"My own castle?" Barrie repeated.

"You know what I mean. It would be yours if you'd been a boy. As you aren't----"

"It's yours!" laughed she.

"Not by right of blood. Only by right of money."

"Well, that's the sovereign right," she insisted, pleased with her own pun.

Then the victims of our miniature Circe arrived in the foreground, shook hands, bandied jokes, and became the most prominent figures in the picture. For the first time I was glad to see them, nor did I bear the youths ill-will for separating me from our beneficent enchantress in the stately church with historic banners. They had separated her from Somerled as well.

After service was over, we stopped only for a look at the stones which mark in the pavement the old Heart of Midlothian, and then hurried back to the hotel, escaping the Americans, but clung to by Douglas and his cousin, another Douglas, who hospitably bade us all to visit him at all his houses. He mentioned several, dotted about in various parts of the country; but when he heard that Miss MacDonald was retiring from the party in a day or two, he ceased to press the general invitation.

There was news of Mrs. Bal at the Caledonian. A maid had arrived who thought that her mistress would not follow until the evening: Somerled asked Barrie, therefore--rather wistfully, I thought--if she would care to go out again in the afternoon. "It will make the time pa.s.s for you,"

he added. I sympathized with him against my will. It was to be his last day of "guardians.h.i.+p," yet he was generous enough to invite me; and not only that, but to let me sit in the car with Barrie and Mrs. James, on the way to Arthur's Seat. After this effort, however, human nature had its way, and he kept her to himself for the rest of the afternoon. It was the first time he had done this since I fastened myself upon the party. To-day, it was evidently by deliberate intention, not accident.

It was as if he said to himself, "These last hours shall be mine." And I wondered if indeed he actually meant them to be last hours. For my part, I certainly meant nothing of the sort. Mrs. Bal, or no Mrs. Bal, Aline or no Aline, Book or no Book, I didn't intend to walk out of Barrie's life without trying to win a foothold in it for the future.

If I had an opinion on such matters, I should have said, up to a week ago, that I didn't approve of marriage for a girl under twenty, as she couldn't possibly know her own mind; but Barrie is the kind of exception to prove any rule. She ought to have a man to take care of her.

Before five we started back, for Mrs. James thought Barrie needed a nap.

It appeared that she hadn't slept the night before, owing to the excitement of suspense; and now "her eyes must be bright for their first look at her mother."