The Heather-Moon Part 41

"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 G.o.d, 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 owners.h.i.+p.

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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 n.o.body 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 was far more fascinating than I! And you knew and liked her first, and had asked her to take a long motor trip with you: and it _was_ true that you quarrelled about me. Looking back it all seemed so natural, especially remembering how you kept away from me and schemed--actually _schemed_--to have me go about with other men, why shouldn't I believe a woman _much_ older than I, when she _cried_ as she told me the story?

Why, at this very place, after you'd been so heavenly to me in the Abbey, you were horrid next day, almost cross: and so you were often.

You hurt my feelings a dozen times a day, and every other man I saw was kinder."

"Because they weren't fighting a great fight with themselves, as I was,"

he said, holding me a little more closely, if possible. "They, the selfish chaps, were letting themselves go. I was saying to myself, 'Perhaps I'm too old and hard for her. I'm the first man she's ever known. I must give her a chance to see and talk with others. For her own sake, I mustn't yield to temptation and try to s.n.a.t.c.h her away from the rest. Norman must have his chance. Douglas must have his chance. The American boys must have theirs----' and by Jove, you seemed to like giving it to them! You nearly drove me out of my mind."

"I thought you were being bored with me."

"You darling, adorable little idiot, as if a man could be bored with you!"

"I didn't know."

"Well, you know now. I was nearly mad in Edinburgh, but I stuck to my principles. I wanted to be sure one way or the other. But Norman had no grat.i.tude. He used your mother to help him against me----"

"That was Mrs. West, I think, who used her."