BOOK I

THE PRELUDE: AND THE PEOPLE

I

For the first time in her life, Barrie saw the door that led to the

garret stairs standing ajar. It was always, always locked, as is

correct, though irritating, for a door that leads to Fairyland.

In Barrie's Outer Life that her grandmother knew, and Miss Hepburn knew,

and Mrs. Muir the housekeeper knew, there was--Heaven be praised!--no

romance at all; for romance is an evil thing, still worse, a frivolous

thing, which may be avoided for a well-brought-up girl though

whopping-cough may not; and already this same evil had wrought vast

damage among the MacDonalds of Dhrum. In the Inner Life of Barrie,

however, there was nothing worth thinking about except romance; and the

door of the garret stairs was one of the principal roads to the

forbidden land.

She stopped in front of it. At first she could not believe her eyes. Her

heart had given a glorious bound, which, only to have felt once in its

full ecstasy, was worth the bother of being born into a family where

there were no mothers or fathers, but only--ah, what an awesome

only!--grim old Grandma MacDonald and Grandma MacDonald's grim old house

where Carlisle ends and moorlands begin.

It is difficult to be sure of things when your heart is beating nineteen

to the dozen, and the special thing, or mirage of a thing,

seems--judging from all else that has happened in Outer Life--much too

good to be true. Yet there it was, that streak of dull, mote-misted

gold, painting what actually appeared to be a crack between the dark

frame of the door and the dark old door itself--just such gold as Barrie

had seen at least once a day ever since she could remember (except when

mumps and measles kept her in bed) by applying an eye to the keyhole.

"Fairy gold" she had named it.

The only person who ever went into the garret was Mrs. Muir, and though

she had the air of making no secret of such expeditions, it had always

struck Barrie as deliciously, thrillingly strange that invariably she

turned the key of the stairway door upon herself the instant she was on

the other side, and religiously performed the same ceremony on letting

herself out. "Ceremony" really was the word, because the key was large,

ancient, and important-looking, and squeaked sepulchrally while it

turned. Barrie knew all this, because in spring and autumn, when Mrs.

Muir paid her visits to fairylands forlorn beyond the oak door, Barrie

lurked under cover of the convenient, thick, and well-placed shadow

behind the grandfather clock on the landing.

It was not autumn now, which was part of the mystery, after these

endless years of routine (they seemed endless to Barrie at eighteen),

and she would certainly have missed the event had this not been her

keyhole hour.

Somehow she had become aware--through heredity and race memory, no

doubt--that looking through keyholes was caddish, a trick unworthy of

any lady who was at heart a gentleman. But there are exceptions to all

keyholes, and this was one, because, as none save ghosts and fairies

lived or moved behind it in the garret, there was nobody to spy upon.

You looked through to stimulate the romance in your starved soul and

save it from death by inanition, because if romance died, then indeed

the Outer Life at Hillard House would be no longer bearable.

Barrie paid her respects to the keyhole o' mornings, for two reasons.

The first and commonplace reason was because Mrs. Muir was busy

downstairs and had no eye to spare to see whether other eyes were glued

to the wrong places. The second and more charming reason was because in

the morning the golden haze floated behind the keyhole like shimmering

water with the sun shining deep into it. By afternoon there was nothing

left to peer into but cold gray shadow, which meant that the fairies and

other inhabitants were not at home.

Mrs. Muir's motive for visiting the garret out of season was a simple

one, but it was well that Barrie did not know this, for it was not at

all interesting, and would have broken the music, thrown cold water on

the thrill. Moths, no respecters of persons or judges of high religious

reputations, had dared to nest in Mrs. MacDonald's best black cashmere

dress, which had not been worn and would not be worn, except on great

occasions, until next season, and had mechanically reduced it to the

rate of second best. Moth-powder and moth-balls were exhausted in

downstairs regions, but there was a store of both in the garret; and in

her annoyance at having to ascend at an unprecedented time, and her

vexation at an accident such as must happen in the best regulated

families, Mrs. Muir had hurriedly returned with the wanted box,

forgetting to lock the door.

Barrie could not be sure that the housekeeper was not even now in the

garret; but she had to find out: and the awful thrill of uncertainty

made her next step a high adventure, the adventure of her life. It was a

step onto the garret stairs, and though it meant dangers of all sorts,

she risked them every one, and closed the door behind her. You see, if

she had not done this, any person passing along the landing--a person

such as Grandma, or Janet Hepburn--would at once have seen the streak of

gold, a mere yellow crack to them, and then and there would have arisen

a clamour for the key.

Even with the door closed the risk remained in a lesser degree. Mrs.

Muir, if she were not at this moment in the garret, might suddenly

remember that she had left the door ajar, taking away the key; then she

would rush back like a stout round whirlwind, and in a minute more

Barrie would be a prisoner, almost like the fair bride in "The Mistletoe

Bough," only there was more air in the garret than in the oak chest that

shut with a spring. But Barrie was used to taking risks--risks

insignificant compared with this, yet big enough to supply salt and

sugar for the dry daily bread of existence.

The door shut softly, but--mercy, what creaks those steps had in them!

They seemed to be vying with each other, the heartless brutes, as to

which could shriek the loudest under a girl's light foot. Probably they

had never seen a girl before, or if they had, it was so long ago they

had forgotten. Fancy Grandma a girl! No wonder, if the steps remembered

her, that they yelled----But by this time Barrie's head had arrived at

the top of the steep stairs, and her eyes were peering cautiously

through clouds of gold dust along the level of a floor, mountainous in

its far horizon with piled chests, trunks, and furniture.

The gold poured through three very high, small dormer-windows which

until now Barrie had known only from outside, staring up at the ivied

house wall from the east garden. The dust lived in the garret air, and

was different from, more wonderful and mysterious than, any other dust,

except perhaps the dust far off in the distance at sunset, where

motor-cars you could not see passed along a road invisible.

Barrie couldn't be quite certain at first whether the garret was empty

of human life, or whether Mrs. Muir was likely to pounce upon her with

reproaches from behind one of those immense oak posts which went up like

trees to meet the high beamed roof. Or she might be concealed by an

oasis of furniture. There were several such oases in the large

wilderness of garret, which covered the whole upper story of the old

house. But a lovely garret it was, a heavenly garret! even better than

Barrie had dreamed it might be, with her eye at the keyhole of the

stairway door. It was peopled with possibilities--glorious, echoing,

beckoning possibilities--which made her heart beat as she could not

remember its beating before.

She climbed the remaining steps regardless of squeaks, because she could

not any longer bear the suspense concerning Mrs. Muir. Nothing moved in

answer to the old wood's complainings, and there was no other sound, or

rather there were no real sounds such as are made by people; but when

Barrie reached the head of the stairs the whole garret was full, to her

ears, of delicate rustlings and whisperings, sighs and footfalls and

breathings, and scurryings out of sight.

No, Mrs. Muir was not here, or by this time she would be out in the open

and scolding hard.

Barrie drew in deep breaths of the strange, still atmosphere which was

like air that had been put to sleep years and years ago. It must have

smelt exactly like this, she thought quietly, in the lost palace of La

Belle Dormante when the Prince found his way in through barricading

thickets. Barrie would hardly have been surprised if she had stumbled

upon a Sleeping Beauty. If she had, she would have said to herself, "So

that's the secret Mrs. Muir's been hiding, by keeping the door locked

up. I _told_ you so!"

The scent of the garret fascinated Barrie, and made her heart beat

heavily, as if she were on the threshold of a mystery. It was made up of

many odours: a faint, not unpleasant mustiness, the smell of dust, a

perfume of old potpourri, and spices, cloves, and camphor for moths, a

vague fragrance of rosewood and worm-eaten oak, a hint of beeswax, a

tang of unaired leather and old books.

Barrie suddenly felt perfectly happy. For to-day this wonderful place

with all its secrets was hers. She hardly knew what to explore first.

All the really interesting things in the house seemed to have risen to

the top, like cream on milk. Along a part of one wall opposite the

stairs and under the east windows whence came the morning gold were

ranged rough old bookcases, a kind of alms-house for indigent books, or

a prison for condemned volumes. But what books! Barrie was drawn to them

as by many magnets, and almost tremulously taking down one after

another, she understood the reason of their banishment. Here were all

the darling books which used to live down in the library, and had been

exiled because she dipped into them, they being (according to Grandma

and Miss Hepburn) "most unsuitable for nice-minded girls." Barrie had

mourned her friends as dead, but they had been only sleeping. And there

were others, apparently far more unsuitable for nice-minded girls--old

leather-bound books with quaint wood engravings and thick yellow pages

printed with old-fashioned "s's" like "f's." Barrie could have browsed

among this company for hours, but there were so many things to see in

the garret, so little time for seeing them, that she felt compelled

merely to say "How do you do, and good-bye," to each allurement.

Her eyes, roaming like a pair of crusading knights in search of romance,

lighted suddenly on a pile or group of furniture in a distant corner.

There was other furniture in the garret, certainly more interesting to a

connoisseur and hunter of antiquities; but Barrie was neither. She had

contrived to seize upon a good deal of queer miscellaneous knowledge

outside lesson hours, yet she did not know the difference between

Sheraton and Hepplewhite. Chairs and sideboards and settees of Georgian

days and earlier had been relegated to this vast pound of unwanted

things, while their places were dishonourably filled downstairs by

mid-Victorian monstrosities which Mrs. MacDonald instinctively approved,

no doubt because they could offer no temptation to the eye. Barrie might

have felt the beauty of the graceful lines if she had given her

attention to these scattered relics of a past before there was a

Grandma; but a group of very different furniture beckoned her curiosity.

The fact that there was a group, and that it seemed in the dimness to be

alike in colour and design, suggested mystery of some sort; and,

besides, it was almost impossible to imagine such furniture adorning

this house.

Evidently it had been taken bodily out of one room. Why? As she asked

herself this question Barrie threaded her way delicately along narrow

paths between chairs, extraordinary leather or hairy cowhide trunks and

thrilling bandboxes of enormous size, made quaintly beautiful with

Chinese wall-paper. She wanted to examine the grouped furniture whose

pale coverings and gilded wood glimmered attractively even in the

darkest corner of the garret.

It certainly was the darkest and farthest. Was this a coincidence, or

had there been a special reason for huddling these things out of sight?

There was not even a clear path to them, though there seemed to have

been method in planning most of the lanes that led from one luggage or

furniture village to another. Nothing led to this village built against

a wall. Its site was in a no-thoroughfare, and, perhaps by design,

perhaps by accident, a barricade had been erected before it; not a very

high barricade, but a wall or series of stumbling-blocks made up of

useless litter. If there could be a special corner of disgrace in this

land where all things were under decree of banishment, here was the

corner.

By means of crawling over, under, and between numerous strangely

assorted objects which formed the barricade, the intruder arrived,

somewhat the worse for wear, at her destination. The furniture village

was composed, she discovered, of a set of blue satin-covered chairs and

sofas, with elaborately carved and gilded frames. There were tables to

match, and an empty glass cabinet, two long mirrors with marble brackets

underneath, also a highly ornamental chest of drawers and a bedstead of

gilded cane and wood, with cupids holding garlands of carved roses.

Barrie began talking to herself half aloud, according to

long-established habit. "Good gracious me!" she exclaimed so inelegantly

that it was well Miss Hepburn could not hear. "What things to find in

this house! They're like--like canary birds in an ironmonger's shop. Who

could have owned them?"

Suddenly the answer flashed into her head, and sent the blood to her

face as if she had received a stinging slap such as Grandma used to

give: "These things were my mother's!"

How insulting that these traces of the vanished one should have been

hustled into a dingy hole where no self-righteous eyes could be offended

by the sight of them! How frivolous and daintily young they looked, even

in their dusty and (Barrie was furiously sure) undeserved disgrace! This

was the secret of the locked garret!

The girl occasionally had moments of hatred for Grandma: moments when

she thought it would have delighted her to see the grim old Puritan

scoffed at and humiliated, or even tortured. At the picture of torture,

however, Barrie's heart invariably failed, and in fancy she rescued the

victim. But never had she hated Mrs. MacDonald so actively as now.

"My mother!" she said again. "How dared the wicked old creature be such

a brute to her!"

For Barrie was certain that these were relics of her mother's presence

in the house. She knew the history of every other woman who had ever

lived here since the place was built in the seventeenth century by an

Alexander Hillard, an ancestor of Grandma's. A forbidding old prig he

must have been, judging from the portrait over the dining-room

mantelpiece, a worthy forbear of Ann Hillard, who had married Barrie's

grandfather, John MacDonald of Dhrum. Barrie often said to herself that

she did not feel related to Grandma. She wanted to be all MacDonald

and--whatever her mother had been. But it was just that which she did

not know, and not a soul would tell. This was her grievance, the great

and ever-burning grievance as well as mystery of her otherwise

commonplace existence; a conspiracy of silence which kept the secret

under lock and key.

Because of Mrs. MacDonald's "taboo," Barrie's mother had become her

ideal. The girl felt that whatever Grandma disapproved must be beautiful

and lovable; and there had been enough said, as well as enough left

unsaid whenever dumbness could mean condemnation, to prove that the old

woman had detested her daughter-in-law.

All Barrie knew about the immediate past of her family was that her

father's people had once been rich, and as important as their name

implied. They were the MacDonalds of Dhrum, an island not far from Skye,

but they had lost their money; and while old Mrs. MacDonald was still a

young married woman (it seemed incredible that she could have been

young!) she and her husband, with their one boy, had come to her old

home near Carlisle. This one boy had grown up to marry--Somebody, or,

according to the standards of Grandma, Nobody, a creature beyond the

pale. The bride must have died soon, for even Barrie's elastic memory,

which could recall first steps taken alone and first words spoken

unprompted, had no niche in it for a mother's image, though father's

portrait was almost painfully distinct. It presented a young man very

tall, very thin, very sad, very dark. The frame for this portrait was

the black oak of the library wainscoting, picked out with the faded gold

on backs of books in a uniform binding of brown leather. Once a day

Barrie had been escorted by her nurse to the door of the library and

left to the tender mercies of this sad young man, who raised his eyes

resignedly from reading or writing to emit a "How do you do?" as if she

were a grown-up stranger. After this question and a suitable reply, not

much conversation followed, for neither could think of anything to say.

After an interval of strained politeness, the child was dismissed to

play or lessons--generally lessons, even from the first, for play had

never been considered of importance in Hillard House. It was nobler, in

the estimation of Grandma, and perhaps of father, to learn how to spell

"the fat cat sat on the black rug," rather than to sprawl personally on

the black rug, sporting in company with the fat cat.

One day, Barrie remembered, she had been told that father was ill and

she could not bid him good morning. She had been treacherously glad, for

father was depressing; but when days passed and she was still kept from

him, it occurred to her that after all father was much, much nicer than

Grandma, and that his eyes, though sad, were kind. The next and last

time she ever saw him, the kind sad eyes were shut, and he was lying in

a queer bed, like a box. He was white as a doll made of porcelain which

he had once given her, and Grandma, who led the child into his room,

said that he was dead. The sleeping figure in the box was only the body,

and the soul had gone to heaven. Heaven, according to Grandma, who wore

black and had red rims round her eyes, was a place high up above the sky

where if you were a sheep you played constantly on a harp and sang

songs. If you were a goat, you did not get there at all, which might

have been preferable, except for the fact that being a goat doomed you

to burn in everlasting fire. Sheep were saved, goats were damned; and,

of course, the sheep must be deserving and clever if they had learned to

sing and play on harps.

Barrie thought she could have been no more than three when her father

died, but she never cared to question Grandma concerning the episode,

after a day when Mrs. MacDonald said in an icy voice, "Your mother was

before God guilty of your father's death." That was years ago now, but

Barrie had not forgotten the shock, or the hateful, thwarted feeling,

almost like suffocation, when Grandma had answered an outbreak of hers

with the words, "The less you know about your mother the better for you.

And the less like her you grow up, the more chance you will have of

escaping punishment in this world and the next."

Barrie believed that her mother's hair must have been red, for once she

had heard nurse say to Mrs. Muir, "No wonder the sight of the child's a

daily eyesore to the mistress; what with them identical dimples, and

hair of the selfsame shade, it must be a living reminder of what we'd

all be glad to forget." Barrie's hair was extremely red; and it had been

intimated to her that no red-haired girl could have cause for vanity,

because to such unfortunates beauty was denied; but loyalty to the

unknown mother forbade the child to hate her copper-coloured locks.

In a room decorated with pale blue satin, red hair might perhaps

simulate gold. The furniture was quite new-looking and unless there had

been some special reason, no mere change of taste would have induced

economical Grandma to make a clean sweep of these practically unused

things.

A tall mirror with its wooden back turned outward helped to screen the

furniture; and deep under the dusty surface of the glass Barrie saw her

own figure dimly reflected, like a form moving stealthily in water

beneath thin ice. It half frightened her, like seeing a spirit, and she

brought the gliding ghost to life by polishing the glass. This gave her

back suddenly the only friend she had, herself, and she was glad of the

companionship. Close to the huddled furniture stood a large trunk, a

Noah's Ark of a trunk. Perhaps it was old-fashioned, but compared to

other luggage stored here in the garret it was new and defiantly smart.

It had a rounded top, and was made of gray painted wood clamped with

iron.

Too good to be true that it should not be locked! And yes, locked it

was, of course. But tied to the iron handle on one end was a key. It

seemed as if some one had thought that the trunk might be sent for, and

therefore the key must be kept handy. The knot was easily undone. The

key fitted the lock. Her heart beating fast, Barrie lifted the lid, and

up to her nostrils floated a faint fragrance. She had never smelled any

perfume quite like it before. The nearest thing was the scent of a

certain rose in the garden when its petals were dried, as she dried them

sometimes for a bowl in her own room.

It was deep twilight in this corner, but Barrie's eyes were accustoming

themselves to the gloom. In the tray of the big trunk there were hats,

and masses of something fluffy and soft, yet crisp like gauze. "My

mother's things!" she said to herself in a very little voice, with a

catch of the breath at the word "mother." And gently she lifted out the

tray, to carry it nearer the light. There was a cartwheel of a Leghorn

hat in it, wreathed with cornflowers; another hat of white tulle trimmed

with a single waterlily, and a queer little bonnet made of

forget-me-nots. The fluffy stuff was a large blue scarf spangled with

pinkish sequins.

Barrie rested the tray on a marble-topped table, and dipped deep into

the trunk for other treasures. There were several dresses, of delicate

materials and pale shades, or else of daring colours elaborately

trimmed. There was a gown of coral-tinted satin embroidered with gold,

and this was of Empire fashion, so like the styles which Barrie saw in

illustrated papers that it might have been made yesterday. Could a

red-haired woman have chosen to wear such a colour? For a moment the

girl doubted that these had been her mother's possessions; but when she

held the folds of satin under her own chin, she was startled by the

picture in the mirror. Why, coral was far more becoming than blue, which

Miss Hepburn always said was the only colour to go with red hair. It

even occurred to Barrie that she might perhaps be--well, almost pretty.

"What if I _am_ pretty, after all?" she asked herself; for she

worshipped beauty, and it had been sad to feel that to her it was denied

forever--that never could she be like one of those lovely beings in

books with whom men fall desperately in love, and for whom they gladly

die.

In great excitement she took off her short, badly made blue serge, and

put on the coral satin, which was low in the neck, and had tiny puffed

sleeves. The dress fastened at the back, but Barrie had grown clever in

"doing up" her own frocks without help, and she easily managed the few

hooks and eyes. The satin was creased, but in the dim light it looked

fresh and beautiful as the petals of some gorgeous flower, and the long,

straight-hanging gown with magic suddenness turned the childlike girl

into a young woman. The two massive tails of hair, which fell over

Barrie's shoulders, ending in thick curls at her waist, now offended her

sense of fitness. They were not "grown up" enough to suit the wearer of

this fairy robe; and crossing the braids at the back of her head, she

brought them round it over her ears, tying the two curls together in a

sort of bow at the top.

"I'm like Cinderella dressed for the ball," she thought, "all except the

glass slippers," and she glanced down distastefully at the thick,

serviceable boots whose toes pointed out from under a line of gold

embroidery.

There must once have been shoes to match this dress. Perhaps they were

at the bottom of the big trunk, whose depths she had not yet reached.

Bending down for another search, she caught sight of something in the

background which she had not seen--a large picture with its face against

the wall.

Instantly Barrie forgot the shoes. Her heart jumped as it had jumped

when she first saw the key in the door of the garret stairs. Would they

have turned to the wall in this dark corner any picture save one? The

girl knew that in another moment she would be looking at the portrait of

her mother.

To get at it, she had to shut the trunk and climb on the rounded lid,

for the big wooden Noah's Ark was too heavy to lift, and too firmly

wedged in among large pieces of furniture to be pushed out of the way.

Kneeling on the trunk, regardless of her finery, Barrie grasped the

picture frame with both hands and pulled it up from its narrow

hiding-place. Then, scrambling down, she backed out into a space clear

enough to permit of turning the picture, round. Then she could not help

giving a little cry, for it seemed that she was beholding a miracle. Her

own face, her own figure, the very dress she wore, and the odd way she

had looped up her red braids, were repeated on the dusty canvas.

It seemed too wonderful to be true, yet it was true that she had chosen

to put on the gown in which its owner had long ago stood for her

portrait. And the knotted curls just above the picture-forehead were

like little ruddy leaping flames.

Just at first glance Barrie thought that she was exactly like the

picture; but when she had wiped the dust off the canvas, and saw the

painting clearly, she began to realize and count the differences. The

portrait was that of a young woman, not a girl still almost a child.

Knowledge and love of the world glittered in the great dark eyes which

turned up ever so slightly at their outer corners in a curiously

bewitching way. Barrie's eyes were dark too, but they were hazel, and

could look gray or even greenish yellow in a bright light; but the eyes

in the picture were almost black, and full of a triumphing consciousness

of their own fascination. The artist had hinted at dimples, and these

Barrie's cheeks repeated; but the girl's face was in shape a delicate

oval, though the chin was as firm as if a loving thumb and finger had

pinched it into prominence. The face on the canvas was fuller, shorter,

squarer, and its chin was cleft in the middle. The mouth was smaller and

more pouting--a self-conscious, petulant mouth; but Barrie thought it

beautiful, with its flowerlike, half-smiling red lips.

"Mother--mother!" she said, "darling, lovely mother! Oh, if you could

only talk to me! If you could only tell me all about yourself!"

As she spoke aloud something moved in the garret: a board creaked, a

struck chair or table scraped along the uneven floor, and Mrs. Muir

appeared round a corner of the piled furniture. Barrie stiffened

herself, standing up straight and tall and defiant, ready for battle,

holding the portrait as if it were a shield. But she was not prepared to

see Mrs. Muir start back, stumbling against something which fell with a

sharp crash, nor to hear her give vent to a squeal of terror. It was

anger the girl had expected to rouse, not fear, and she faced the old

housekeeper from her distance in blank astonishment.

They stood staring at each other across the shadows lit by floating

motes of gold; and Mrs. Muir's large, pallid face looked, Barrie

thought, as if it had been turned to gray stone, the gray stone of the

carved monuments in the family burial-ground. For a moment neither

spoke, but at last some words seemed to drop from the old woman's mouth,

rather than be deliberately uttered:

"May God have mercy on me!"

"What _is_ the matter?" Barrie exclaimed, the strange spell broken; but

instead of answering, Mrs. Muir gasped, and then broke out crying, a

queer gurgly sort of crying which frightened the girl. She did not

dislike the housekeeper, and she was so genuinely distressed as well as

surprised at this strange exhibition, that she would have set down the

portrait to run to Mrs. Muir's succour if at that moment the stillness

of the garret had not been wakened by the tap, tap of a stick. Somebody

was coming up the stairs, hobbling, limping, yet hurrying with

extraordinary energy.

There was only one person in the house, or maybe in the world, whose

coming made that noise, that mingled hobble, rush, and tap: Grandma.

Barrie and Mrs. Muir continued to stare at one another, but their

expression had changed. The approach of a danger to be shared in common

had made the enemies friends. "This is going to be awful. What shall we

do?" the old eyes said to the young and the young eyes said to the old.

Mrs. Muir had forgotten her burning wish and intention to scold Miss

Barribel; nevertheless, the housekeeper was not to be trusted as an

ally. Under the lash of Mrs. MacDonald's tongue she would defend

herself, and Barrie would go to the wall. But the spirit of the martyr

was in the girl, and when the first dread thrill of the tap, tap on the

garret stairs had subsided in her nerves, she remembered her wrongs and

her mother's wrongs, and was not afraid of Grandma. She girded herself

for war.

The tapping came nearer. Mrs. MacDonald was grievously crippled with

rheumatism. Only a strong incentive could have urged her up the steep

straight stairway, with its high steps; but Grandma was indomitable.

Lurching like a ship in a heavy sea, she swept round the corner and

brought herself to anchor by planting her stick with a crash on the wavy

oak floor. There she stood, the grim and hard old craft that had

weathered a hundred storms and refused to be dismayed by any. She must

have been alarmed by the housekeeper's scream and the crash of falling

furniture, and the figure in the coral satin dress was at least as

startling for her as for her old servant; but she gave no cry, and her

face looked as it always looked, hard, and stern, and passionless, as

her gray eyes travelled from granddaughter to housekeeper, from

housekeeper to granddaughter.

"What is the meaning of this?" she inquired in her worst voice, which

Barrie always thought like the turning of a key in an unoiled lock.

"This, ma'am?" quavered Mrs. Muir, unused to the pangs of guilty fear,

and bitterly ashamed of them. "Why, I'd been up here getting some more

moth-balls out of the chemist's store-box, and while I was gone Miss

Barribel----"

"You must have left the stairway door unlocked, woman."

"For the first time in my life, ma'am, I did." The answer was an appeal

for justice if not mercy. It was an awful thing to be called "woman" by

the mistress, and to be impaled on that sharp gray gaze never sheathed

behind spectacles. Mrs. Muir was not one to quail easily, but she had

been at fault, and she realized how her small sin of omission was

leading up to consequences more momentous than anything which had

happened in this house for seventeen years. In a flash she remembered,

too, that it was just seventeen years ago this month of August since the

first wearer of the coral satin had gone forever.

"That is no excuse," said Mrs. MacDonald. "There are some things it is a

sin to forget. Locking the garret door is one, you well know why. Now

the mischief is done."

"Who'd ha' dreamed, ma'am, that Miss Barribel would ha' bin on the watch

like a cat for a mouse----"

"It's no question of dreaming, but experience. You ought to know as well

as I do that unfortunately the girl is always on the watch for anything

she ought not to see or do. It is in her blood. These many years I have

struggled to crush down inherited tendencies, and keep her on the

straight path I would have her father's daughter tread. Yet how have I

succeeded? Every day shows how little. This is only one instance among

many."

The pale cold eyes, having chilled Mrs. Muir's blood, turned to do their

work of icing Barrie into subjection; but the girl's veins ran fire. For

once, Grandma was powerless to make her feel a frozen worm.

"I wish I'd known before that my mother's things were here," she said,

in a clear, loud voice. "I'd have broken down the door to get to them.

They're mine--all mine. I will have them."

"You will not," Mrs. MacDonald answered. "Set that portrait back where

you found it with its face to the wall. Take off that immodest,

outrageous dress, and put on your own decent one. Fold up the scarlet

abomination and lay it in the trunk with the rest of the brood."

Somehow that word "brood" in connection with her lost mother's gay,

pretty garments made Barrie see her grandmother through a red haze.

"It's the things you say, not mother's lovely clothes, that are exactly

like a brood of horrid, ugly imps!" she cried. "Always you've kept

everything about her a secret from me, but you can't go on doing it now.

I've seen her beautiful picture. I know it's hers without any telling.

Nothing can make me believe it isn't, no matter what you say, either of

you. So you may as well tell me all about her. I won't move till you

do."

"So be it, then," said Mrs. MacDonald in an iron voice. "The time had to

come some day. Let it be to-day, though for your father's sake I would

have spared you the knowledge until you reached your twenty-first year.

Do not flatter yourself that your threat 'not to move' has the smallest

effect on me. It has none. If I chose, I could force you to obey me this

instant, and put those reminders of sin out of my sight. But if you have

any sense of shame in you, any affection for your father's memory, it

will be the severest punishment I can inflict to tell you the truth

while you are wearing that dress and looking at the face of that

portrait."

Despite her inward flame of fury, which did not wane, the girl was

struck into silence by her grandmother's tone and manner. She stood very

still and white in the coral satin.

"You can go now, Muir," said Mrs. MacDonald. "What is to come must be

between me and my son's child."

Without a word the housekeeper turned and went away. Perhaps she was

glad to escape. And now that her own scolding was over, there was

sympathy in the last look she threw the girl.

There was a certain vague and very dim sense of gratitude in Barrie's

heart toward Mrs. MacDonald for what she had just done. For Barrie did

not want other ears to hear evil words spoken of her mother, and she was

sure that they would be spoken.

Not until the stairs had ceased to creak under the departing feet did

Grandma again open her lips. She had seemed to be thinking intently, as

if making up her mind how to begin. Perhaps she was praying for

guidance, Barrie told herself; but the morning and evening prayers in

the dining-room with a few servants assembled were like harangues or

didactic instructions to Heaven rather than supplications. Barrie

thought that her grandmother had created a God for herself in her own

image, and considered that she had a right, therefore, to tell Him what

to do. Why should an all-good, all-wise God create a disagreeable,

unkind person like Grandma? It didn't stand to reason. And Miss Hepburn

was of opinion that God was indeed beneficent, in spite of those eternal

fires in which she, almost equally with Grandma, fervently believed.

When there was no further sound of the housekeeper, Mrs. MacDonald began

to speak, slowly and very deliberately.

"My son married against my will. His father was dead, and a woman's

authority was not enough, for he was stubborn, though a good son until

_she_ got hold of him with her witcheries and her false charms. He met

her in London, and took her out of the theatre, where he had no business

to go; and if he never had gone, all our troubles would have been saved.

The woman was a play-actress--a light, frivolous creature with no more

sense of moral responsibility than a butterfly."

"Butterflies are beautiful!" Barrie broke in. "God made them, I suppose,

just as much as He made ants, and I'm sure He loves them heaps better."

She thought of her grandmother as a big black ant, hoarding disagreeable

crumbs in a gloomy hole.

Mrs. MacDonald went on as if she had not heard.

"The woman married my son because he had money, and when she had spent

all she could lay her hands on--spent it on dresses and hats and every

kind of sinful vanity--she left him and his home, left her baby a year

old, to return to the theatre, I suppose. I thank God that I still had

influence with Robert my son to keep him from running after her like a

love-sick fool, and trying to bring her back to the decent home she had

disgraced. But his heart was broken by her wicked folly. Two years

they'd had together under this roof and the disappointments she had made

the boy suffer undermined his health. Two years more he was spared to

me, and then he was taken. Never once did your mother write to him or to

me, not so much as to ask whether her husband and child were alive or

dead. While Robert lived, her things remained in her room just as she

had left them the night she stole away like a thief, carrying only a

handbag. There was the furniture the poor bewitched man had bought

because he thought nothing in his mother's house was fit for his

wonderful bride. There were her clothes--the very dress you have on,

made on purpose to show off her brazen looks in a portrait she induced

my son to order from a painting man. There was everything, except her

jewels, which she was careful to take--jewels more fit for an empress of

a heathen nation than a self-respecting Englishwoman: and that is where

the root of the mischief lay. She wasn't English. I warned my son in the

beginning when he wrote of his infatuation. I said, 'It is bad enough

that she should be a play-actress; but the daughter of an _Irish father_

and an _American mother_, that is _fatal_!' He would not listen, and he

was punished for his obstinacy. You were no comfort to him, for, as I

pointed out many a time, you were bound to grow up the living image of

the woman who had betrayed us. I told him if he lived he'd have it all

to go over again in you--maybe worse, if that could be possible, for the

sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and

fourth----"

"But I thought it was my mother I was like," Barrie flung at her.

"Figuratively speaking, it is the same thing, as you well understand,

unless you are a fool. Your father was not strong enough to bear the

burden which his own mistakes had bound on his shoulders. He left the

responsibility of bringing up that woman's daughter to me, and under

Heaven I have done my best. I have kept you away from vanities, hoping

that in spite of all you might remain unspotted from the world. But

blood will tell. To-day I find that, as your mother before you stole

like a thief out of the house, so you have stolen into this place, which

was forbidden you, to gratify your curiosity and your vanity. I find you

as bold as brass parading in that low-necked red dress, which I told

your mother was a shame to any woman when I saw her flaunting in it. Now

you know what she was, and what you are and are like to be. I tell you

again, take off that gown as you would tear off a poisoned toad from

your flesh; then go down to your own room and spend the rest of the day

in prayer and meditation."

It was a triumph for Grandma that Barrie did not throw at her an

insolent answer. For a moment the girl did not reply at all. Then she

said, in a singularly quiet way, that she would take off the dress and

put it back in the trunk, but not unless her grandmother would leave her

alone to do it. Afterward, she would ask nothing better than to go to

her own room and stay there. "I _want_ to think," she added; "I have a

lot to think about. But I shall think only good things of my mother.

What you have told me has made me very, very happy. I believed that my

mother was dead. Now I know she's in the same world with me, I could

almost die of joy."

"It is like her daughter to feel that," Mrs. MacDonald returned

bitterly. "If you are not downstairs in ten minutes, I will have the

door locked and keep you in the garret without food or drink or light

for twenty-four hours."

"I should _love_ that!" exclaimed Barrie suddenly, in the manner of her

old self. Nevertheless, she descended and advertised her return to the

prosaic world by closing the door loudly in less than ten minutes after

Mrs. MacDonald had gone.

She walked straight into her own room and bolted herself in. If Grandma

had seen her then, she could not have helped admitting that there was as

much of Robert MacDonald in the lines of the girl's face as of the

guileful Barbara Ballantree.

II

No notice was taken of Barrie until half-past eight o'clock that

night--half-past eight being considered night in Mrs. MacDonald's

house-hold. At that time, just as the hour was announced by an old

friend, the grandfather clock on the landing, who had seen the girl go

into the garret, Miss Janet Hepburn knocked at Barrie's door.

"Barribel," she called, as always pronouncing the fanciful name with a

certain reluctance, partly on principle, partly because it was known to

have been chosen by "that woman." "Barribel, by your grandmother's

permission, I've brought you some supper. Open your door and take in the

tray."

A voice answered from behind the panel, "I'll open the door if you will

bring in the tray yourself."

Miss Hepburn hesitated for a moment. In the dun gaslight of the corridor

her sharp profile looked eager as the face of a hungry bird. She thought

quickly. Mrs. MacDonald had not yet finished her own supper. No such

frivolity as evening dinner was known at Hillard House. Soup after dark

except for an invalid would have been considered a pitfall; but the old

lady liked to linger alone over the last meal of the day, reading a

religious volume by the light of a lamp placed on the table at the left

of her plate. When Miss Hepburn and Barrie finished they always, as a

matter of form, asked to be excused, though they both knew, and Mrs.

MacDonald knew that they knew, how more than willing she was to be left

alone with her book. At a quarter past nine the servants were called,

they having already supped on bread and cheese. A chapter, preferably

from the Old Testament, was read, a prayer offered up, and at

nine-thirty precisely the family was ready to go to bed. Miss Hepburn

had reason to believe that for three quarters of an hour she was free to

do as she wished, and she wished as ardently as she was able to wish

anything, to see Barrie. She had heard next to nothing of the day's

events from Mrs. MacDonald, whose companion she was supposed to be now

that the girl no longer needed her whole morning's services as

governess. And from Mrs. Muir, into whose room she had slipped at

tea-time, very little had been dragged out. Yet it was certain that

something tremendous had happened. If she wanted to know what, her one

hope lay with Barrie.

"Very well," she said, with the proper mingling of kindness and dignity,

"I will bring in the tray."

The door immediately opened, and closed again after the flat figure of

Miss Hepburn. Barrie thought that if the good Janet had been born a fish

she would have been a skate, or at roundest a sole. Even her profile was

flat, as if the two sides of her face had been pressed firmly together

by a strong pair of hands. She wore her hair very flat on her head,

which was flat behind; and just at the nape of the neck was a flat

drab-tinted knot, of almost the same grayish-yellowish brown as her

complexion. On her flat breast was a flat brooch with a braid of pale

hair as a background. Even her voice sounded flat in its effort at

meekness and self-repression, calculated to appease Mrs. MacDonald in

trying circumstances. Miss Hepburn looked about forty-five; but she had

always looked forty-five for the last twelve years, and Barrie could

hardly have believed that she had ever been younger.

"Your grandmother thinks that you have now been sufficiently punished,"

she announced, "and you are to come down as usual to prayers."

"Oh, am I?" echoed Barrie. "We'll see about that. As for punishment, if

it pleases Grandma to think she's punished me, she may. I don't care.

She couldn't have made me come out of my room to-day if she tried. But I

don't bear _you_ any grudge, Heppie. I'm very glad to see you. I want

you to tell me things."

"What things?" inquired Miss Hepburn. "I didn't come to talk. I am here

simply to see you begin your supper. You must be--er--very hungry."

"I've had plenty of food all day," said Barrie--"food for thought." She

cleared a place on the one table by pushing a few school-books out of

the way. She had been sitting in the twilight, for she was not allowed

to have matches. Their possession might have tempted her to burn gas

after ten o'clock, when at latest all lights had to be out. Now, Janet

Hepburn brought a box of matches on the tray; and the gas, when lit,

showed the sparsely furnished room with its gray-painted, pictureless

wall, against which Barrie's red hair glowed like a flame. Outside the

open window the old ivy and the young peeping roses, which had been

green and pink and gold in the twilight, lost their colour as the gas

flared up, and evening out of doors darkened into night.

"I've brought you bread and cheese with a slice of cold beef," announced

Miss Hepburn, "and Mrs. Muir has baked you a potato, but I am not sure

whether your grandmother would approve of that. She distinctly said a

cold supper."

"Will you please thank Mrs. Muir for me?" Barrie asked.

"You can thank her to-morrow."

"I mayn't have a chance. Do thank her for me to-night. Say I wanted you

to."

"Why are you in such a hurry?"

"Oh--just _because_. Will you?"

"Yes, I will try, after prayers, when she is shutting up the house. Now,

eat your supper."

"I don't want to, yet. Please, Heppie, dear Heppie, tell me what you

know about my mother. You weren't here when she was, but you're a kind

of cousin of Grandma's, and you must have heard all about her."

"If I had, that would not give me the right to tell you," replied Miss

Hepburn, clinging desperately to her stiff dignity, despite the pleading

voice and the "dear, dear Heppie," against which, being one third human,

she was not quite proof. It was always difficult not to be beguiled by

Barrie.

"I've only you I _can_ come to," said the girl. "You're the one person

in the house except me who isn't old and dried-up."

This was a stroke of genius, but the genius of instinct, for Barrie had

no experience in the art of cajolery. "Was I named after my mother?"

"Only partly. She was a Miss Ballantree, and her first name was Barbara,

I believe; but she disliked it, and when her husband wished to have the

child christened the same, she insisted on Barribel. It seems that is an

old Scottish name also, or Celtic perhaps, for she was Irish, though I

know nothing of her family. But Barribel has always sounded frivolous to

me."

"Yet you would never call me Barrie when I begged you to. I wonder if

there ever was another girl who had to make up her own pet name, and

then had nobody who would use it except herself? When I talk to myself I

always say 'Barrie,' in different tones of voice, to hear how it sounds.

I try to say it as if I loved myself, because no one else loves

me--unless maybe you do; just a tiny, tiny bit. Do you, Heppie?"

"Of course I have an affection for you," Miss Hepburn returned

decorously, half alarmed at so pronounced a betrayal of her inner

emotions, "and naturally your grandmother----"

"Let's not talk about her now," Barrie pleaded. "Was my mother young

when she was married?"

"Quite young, I understand--about nineteen."

"Only nineteen--not very much older than I am. And she stood two years

of Grandma and this house!"

"Barribel, you forget yourself."

"If I do, it's because I'm thinking about my mother. Twenty--twenty-one;

that's what she was when she--went away!"

"She must have been. Of course, it is not my place to----"

"No, dear Heppie, I know it isn't, so don't, please. Could even you

blame her for wanting to run away from this awful house, and she an

Irish girl?"

"She was half American, I have heard."

"Perhaps, for all I know about Americans, that made it even harder for

her to stand Grandma--and everything else. Anyhow, _I_ don't blame

her--not one bit."

"What! not for deserting her loving husband and her helpless child?"

"All day I've been wondering if father knew how to show his love for

her. He didn't to me. I can remember that. I used to be afraid of him

and glad to escape. Perhaps he made _her_ feel like that too--oh,

without meaning it. I'm sure he was good. But so is Grandma

good--horribly good. There's something about this house that spoils

goodness, and turns it to a kind of poison. It must have been awfully

depressing to be married to father if one had any _fun_ in one, and

loved to laugh. As for the 'helpless child,' I dare say I was a horrid

little squalling brat with scarlet hair and a crimson face and a vile

temper, that no one could possibly love."

"It is a mother's duty to love her child, in spite of its appearance;

and if it has a bad temper, all the more should she endeavour by prayer

and example to eradicate its faults in bringing it up. At least, so I

have always been taught. Personally, of course," Heppie hastened to add,

"I know nothing of motherhood and its duties."

"Then you never played dolls," said Barrie gravely. "I never had but one

doll--the porcelain-headed darling father gave me. Grandma let me keep

it because it came from him, and I did love it dearly! I do still. I

learned just how to be a mother, playing with it. I know I shall be a

perfectly sweet mother when I have a child."

"Barribel, you should not say such things. It is most unmaidenly."

"I don't see why," Barrie argued. "Perhaps my mother's people wouldn't

let her say such things when she was a young girl, and then she began to

be an actress, and was so busy she never had time to learn much about

children and duty and that sort of thing. But I won't be unmaidenly any

more, dear Heppie--at least, if I can help it--if you'll only do me one

great favour."

"What is it?" Miss Hepburn inquired cautiously.

"Tell me what's become of my mother. Oh, you needn't be afraid! Grandma

let it out that she's alive. She's not even old yet--not so _very_ old.

You must tell me what's happened to her."

"Nothing creditable, I fear," replied Janet, finding a certain sad

pleasure in the sins of another, so different from her own good self.

"She has, I believe, continued to act on the stage."

"I'm sure she must be the greatest success!" exclaimed Barrie.

"As to that, I have no means of knowing. I always skip news of the

theatre in reading the papers aloud to Mrs. MacDonald."

"Oh, just to _think_ that any day I might have seen things about my

mother in the newspapers, and perhaps even her pictures! I wish I'd

known! I'd have got at the papers somehow before they were cremated. Now

I understand why Grandma tries to keep them out of my hands."

"There were many reasons for that," said Miss Hepburn, loyal to her

employer's convictions and her own pallid copies of those convictions.

"No really _nice_ girl ever reads the newspapers, or would wish to do

so. They are full of wickedness. There is much I have to miss out."

"Do you think my mother has kept her married name for the stage?" Barrie

wanted to know.

"That," answered Miss Hepburn almost eagerly, "has been poor Mrs.

MacDonald's greatest trial--except your father's death. To think that

the name of her son--the name of his great ancestors--should be bandied

about in the theatres!"

"Then she does call herself MacDonald!"

"I fear that is the case. But now it will be useless asking me any more

questions, for I shall not answer them. Will you let me see you begin

your supper?"

"No, dear Heppie, for I'm not hungry; and I want to think. Thank you so

much for talking to me, and being so kind. I believe you'd often like to

be kind when you daren't."

Miss Hepburn looked slightly surprised. She had expected to be teased

for further information, rather than thanked cordially for that already

doled out. "I try to do my duty both to your grandmother and you," she

returned. "I really must go now, and I shall not have to lock your door

again, as Mrs. MacDonald considers the punishment over. You must be

careful to come down the minute you hear the bell, and not be late for

prayers."

"Good-bye, if you must go," said Barrie, following the small, stiff

figure to the door. "I--I wish you'd kiss me, Heppie."

Janet actually started, and a blush produced itself in a way peculiar to

her face, appearing mostly upon the nose, where it lingered rosily at

the end. Kisses were not exchanged under Mrs. MacDonald's roof. Barrie's

was a most disquieting suggestion, and sounded as if she had a

presentiment that she was about to die or, at the best, be very ill.

Still, there was no real impropriety in an ex-governess kissing her late

pupil; and possibly the desire revealed a spirit of repentance and

meekness on the part of Barribel, which deserved to be encouraged.

Without spoken questions, therefore, Miss Hepburn pecked with her

unkissed virgin lips the firm pink satin of Barrie's cheek. The deed

seemed curiously epoch-making, and stirred her oddly. She was ashamed of

the feeling she had, rather like a bird waking up from sleep and

fluttering its wings in her breast. Her nose burned; and she hastened

her departure lest Barribel should notice some undignified difference in

manner or expression.

"I shall see you again downstairs in a few minutes," she said hurriedly.

Barrie did not answer, and Miss Hepburn softly shut the door.

Instantly the girl began making a sandwich of the bread and cheese,

which she wrapped up in a clean handkerchief. She would not take the

napkin, because that belonged to Grandma. Hanging up in the wardrobe was

a long cloak of the MacDonald hunting tartan, which looked as if it had

been fashioned out of a man's plaid. On each side was a pocket; and into

one of these Barrie slipped her little package. Already made up and

lying on the floor of the wardrobe was another parcel, very much bigger,

rolled in dark green baize which might have been a small table cover.

From a shelf Barrie snatched a tam-o'-shanter, also a dark green in

colour. Absent-mindedly she pulled it over her head, and the green

brightened the copper red of her hair. Slipping her arms into the

sleeves of the queer cloak, she caught up her bundle, turned down the

gas, and peeped cautiously out into the corridor. No one was there. The

house was very still. Grandma's bell for reading and prayer would not

ring yet for twenty minutes or more. The girl tiptoed out, locked the

door behind her, and slipped the key into the pocket with the

sandwiches. If any one came to call her to prayers, it would appear that

she had shut herself in and was refusing to answer.

III

"Car-l-i-s-l-e!" The Caruso voice of a gifted railway porter intoned the

word in two swelling syllables, so alluring in their suggestion to

passengers that it was strange the whole train did not empty itself upon

the platform. So far from this being the case, however, not more than

six men and half as many women, one with two sleepy, whimpering

children, obeyed the siren call.

Five of the men looked for porters, and eventually culled them, like

stiff-stemmed wayside plants; but the sixth man had not set his foot on

the platform before he was accosted by two would-be helpers.

What there was about him so different from, and so superior to, his

fellow-travellers that it was visible to the naked eye at night, in a

not too brilliantly lighted railway station, could be explained only by

experts in the art of deciding at a glance where the best financial

results are to be obtained.

The man was not richly dressed, was not decked out with watch-chains and

scarf-pins and rings, nor had he a shape to hint that the possession of

millions had led to self-indulgence. Many people would have passed him

by with a glance, thinking him exactly like other men of decent birth

and life who knew how to wear their clothes; but railway porters and

romantic women (are there other women?) have a special instinct about

men. The two female passengers unhampered by howling babies looked at

him as they went by, and they would instinctively have known, though

even they could not have explained, why the porters unhesitatingly

selected this man as prey.

He was not very tall, and not very handsome, and he was not conspicuous

in any way: but if he had been an actor, a deaf and blind audience would

somehow have felt with a thrill that he had come upon the stage. The

secret was not intricate: only something of which people talk a dozen

times a day without knowing technically what they mean--personal

magnetism. He was rather dark and rather thin, rather like a conquering

soldier in his simple yet authoritative way of giving orders for what he

wanted done. He had eyes which were of an almost startling blueness in

his sunburned face: a peculiarity that made strangers look twice at him

sometimes. If his features hardened into a certain cynical grimness when

he thought about things that really mattered, his smile for things that

didn't matter was singularly pleasant.

He did not smile at the porters as he pointed out that, besides his

suit-case, he had only one small piece of luggage in the van, to be

taken to his automobile; and there were other passengers who looked much

jollier and more amenable than he: yet it was to him that a girl spoke

as he was about to walk past her, after his chosen porter.

"Oh! Will you please be so very kind as to wait a minute!" she

exclaimed.

Her "Oh!" was like a barrier suddenly thrown down in front of him. Of

course he stopped; and if he were not greatly astonished it was only

because so many odd things had happened to him in life, in railway

stations and drawing rooms and in all sorts of other places, that it

took a great deal to make him feel surprise, and still more to make him

show it.

He was roused to alertness, however, when he saw what manner of girl

invited him to "wait a minute." He had never seen one like her before.

And yet, of whose face did hers piquantly remind him? He had a dim

impression that it was quite a celebrated face, and no wonder, if it

were like this one. The only odd thing was that he could not remember

whose the first face had been, for such features could never let

themselves be wiped off memory's slate.

The girl was almost a child, apparently, for her hair hung in two long

bright red braids over her extraordinary cloak; and her big eyes were

child's eyes. What her figure was like, except that she was a tall,

long-legged, upstanding young creature, no one could judge, not even an

anatomist, because of that weird wrap. As a cloak it was a shocking

production--a hideous, unbelievable contribution to cloakhood from the

hands of a mantle-making vandal--but it caught the man's interest,

because before his eyes danced the hunting tartan of the MacDonalds of

Dhrum. Once that particular combination of green, blue, red, brown,

purple, and white had flashed to his heart a signal of warm human love,

daring and high romance; but he believed that long ago his heart had

shut against such deceiving signals. Across the way in, he had printed

in big letters "NO THOROUGHFARE," and was unconsciously well pleased

with himself because he had done this, thinking it a proof of mature

wisdom, keen insight into his brother man--especially perhaps his sister

woman--and a general tendency toward scientific, bomb-proof modernity,

the triumph of intellect over emotion. And in truth his experiences had

been of a kind to change the enthusiastic boy he once had been into the

cynical, hard-headed man he was now. Nevertheless, as he looked at the

girl in the tartan cloak, he heard within himself the war-cry of the

clan MacDonald, "Fraoch Eilean!" and he smelt the heather of the purple

isle of Dhrum.

It was many years since he had seen that strangely formed island-shape

cut in amethyst against the gold of sunset sky and sea; but the purple

and the gold were unforgettable, even for one who thought he had

forgotten and lost the magic long ago.

She was a beautiful girl in spite of the ugly tam and the bag of a

cloak. Her eyes had the deep light of clear streams that have never

reflected other things than trees, shadowing banks of wild flowers, and

skies arching above. There was something quaintly arresting about her,

apart from the odd clothes.

The man stopped. His porter lumbered on sturdily; but that was just as

well. The girl had asked him to wait: so he waited in silence to hear

what she would say.

"Will you please look at a thing I want very much to sell?" she began.

"Perhaps you'll like to buy it. Nobody else will--but," she added

hastily, "I think you'll admire it."

He looked her steadily in the eyes for a few seconds, and she returned

the look, in spite of herself rather than because she was determined to

give him gaze for gaze.

"Why do you ask me to buy what you have to sell?" he answered by a

question. "Is it for charity or the cause of the Suffragettes?"

"Oh, no, it's not for charity!" the girl exclaimed. "And I don't know

what you mean by Suffragettes."

The man laughed. "Where have you lived?" he questioned her.

She blushed for an ignorance which evidently struck strangers as

fantastic. "Near Carlisle with my grandmother," she explained; "but

she's never let me have friends, or make visits, or read the papers.

I've just left her house now, and I want to go to London. I _must_ go to

London, but I haven't any money, and they won't trust me to pay them for

my ticket when I get some. So I tried to sell a piece of jewellery I

have, and nobody would buy it. I thought when I saw you come out of the

train that maybe _you_ would. I don't know why--but you're different.

You look as if you'd know all about valuable things--and whether they're

real; and as if you'd be--not stupid, or like these other people."

"Thank you," he returned, and smiled his pleasant smile. If another man

had described such a meeting with a pretty and apparently ingenuous girl

in a railway station at ten o'clock at night, he would still have

smiled, but not the same smile. He would have been sure that the girl

was a minx, and the man a fool. He recognized this unreasonableness in

himself; nevertheless, he had no doubt that his own instinct about the

girl was right. She was genuine of her sort, whatever her strange sort

might be; and though he laughed at himself for the impulse, he could not

help wanting to do something for her, in an elder-brother way. For an

instant his thoughts went to the woman who was waiting for and expecting

him, the train being late. But quickly the curtain was drawn before her

portrait in his mind.

"You say your grandmother never let you make friends," he said, "yet you

seem to believe in your own knowledge of human nature."

"Because, what you aren't allowed to see or do, you think of a great

deal more. Knowledge _jumps_ into your head in such an interesting way,"

the girl answered, with an apologetic air, as a witness might if wishing

to conciliate a cross-questioning counsel. "Here's the jewellery I want

to sell. It was my father's, and belonged to his father and

grandfather."

She opened her ungloved right hand to reveal a bonnet brooch of

beautiful and very ancient workmanship showing the crest of the

MacDonalds of Dhrum set with a fine cairngorm and some exquisite old

paste. It must have come down through many fathers to many sons, for it

was at least two hundred years old.

"You would sell this?" the man exclaimed.

"Well, I _must_ get to London," she excused herself, "and it's the only

thing I have worth selling. I _knew_ you'd see it was good. The others

would hardly look at it, except one quite horrid man who squeezed my

hand when I was showing him the brooch, and that made me behave so

rudely to him he went away at once."

"Was your father a MacDonald of Dhrum?" asked the man who had not

squeezed her hand, and exhibited no wish to do so, though his eyes never

left her face.

"Yes. Why, do you know our tartan and crest?"

"I--thought I recognized them." For an instant he was tempted to add an

item of information concerning himself, but he beat down the impulse.

"If you want money, you can raise something on this without selling it,"

he went on. "It would be a pity to part with an heirloom."

"I didn't know I could do that," said the girl. "Of course it would be

better. I'm going to London to find somebody--my mother," she continued,

in a different tone. "When I get to her, she'll give me money, of

course, and I can pay you back, if you'll lend me enough now to buy my

ticket--and perhaps a little, a very little, more, because I mayn't find

her at once. I may have to go on somewhere else after London, though I

hope not. _Will_ you lend me some money and keep the brooch till I pay?"

"I might be prepared to do that," said the man slowly. "But you surely

don't mean to start off for London alone, in the night."

"Why not?" she argued. "There's no danger in railway trains, is there?

I've never been in one yet, but I've read lots about them in books, and

I think I shall love travelling."

"You've never been in a train!"

"No, because I was born at Grandma's house, and she never travels

anywhere, and I've always lived with her. If my father hadn't died, and

my mother hadn't--hadn't been obliged to go away when I was a baby,

probably I should have been just like other girls. But now I suppose I

must be very different, and seem stupid and queer. Every one stared as

if I were a wild animal when I was asking my way to the railway station.

But you will lend me the money, won't you, if you think the brooch is

worth it, because one of the porters told me there'd be a train for

London soon?"

"When people are making up their minds to lend money to strangers, they

always put a number of questions first," answered the man gravely, "so I

must ask you to excuse me if I catechize you a little before I engage

myself to do anything. Do you expect any one to meet you in London, Miss

MacDonald?"

"Dear me, no!" and she could not help laughing to hear herself called

"Miss MacDonald," a dignity never bestowed on her before. "I don't know

any one in London--unless my mother's there."

"Oh, indeed! But London's quite a big place, bigger a good deal than

Carlisle, you know, so you may have some difficulty in finding your

mother if you aren't sure of the address."

"She hasn't an address--I mean, I don't know it. But she's an actress on

the stage. I think she must be so beautiful and splendid that almost

every one will have heard of her, so all I will have to say is, 'Please

tell me whether Mrs. MacDonald the actress is in London?'"

"Not Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald!" This time he did look surprised.

"Ballantree was her name before she was married," the girl admitted.

"And her Christian name's Barbara. Do you know her?"

"I do, slightly," replied the man. "But I had no idea that she----" He

broke off abruptly, looking more closely than ever at the vivid face

under the knitted tam.

"I suppose, if you don't know her very well, she never spoke to you

about having a daughter?" Barrie asked.

"No, she never spoke of it. But look here, Miss MacDonald, as I happen

to be an acquaintance--I daren't call myself a friend--of your mother's,

you'd better let me advise you a little, without thinking that I'm

taking a liberty. From what you say, I have the idea that you've not had

time to write Mrs. Bal--I mean, Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald that you're

coming to pay her a visit."

"No, I only made up my mind to-day," said Barrie carefully. "Grandma and

she aren't good friends, so my mother and I--don't write to each other.

Grandma doesn't like the stage, and as you know mother, I don't mind

telling you she's been perfectly horrid--Grandma, I mean. She let me

believe that mother was dead--just because she's an actress, which I

think must be splendid. That's why I'm running away, and wild horses

couldn't drag me back."

"I see. Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald will be taken by surprise when you

turn up."

"Yes. It will be like things I've dreamed about and invented to make

into story-books--really interesting story-books such as Grandma

wouldn't let me read, for she approves only of Hannah More. Won't mother

be delighted?"

"Just at first her surprise may overcome her natural joy," said the man.

"And here is where my advice comes in. It's this: Let the news be broken

to your mother before you try to see her. That would be the wisest

thing. Besides, she mayn't be in London now--probably isn't. It's past

the season there; and Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald is one of those

beautiful and successful people, you know, who are generally found at

places in the most fashionable time of the year. If she's acting, it

will be easy to find out where she is from one of the stage papers. She

could be written to, and----"

"No, I _want_ to surprise her!" Barrie persisted. "I want first to see

her, for I know she must be a darling and perfectly lovely; and then I

want to say, 'Mother, here's your daughter Barribel, that you named

yourself, come to love you and live with you always.'"

"Er--yes. It sounds charming," replied the man, gazing at a large

advertisement of a new food with quite an odd look in his eyes. "If your

heart's set on that scene I've no right to try and dissuade you; but

anyhow, the thing to do is to find out where she is before you start,

for you might get to London only to have to turn round and come back. In

August she's more likely to be in Scotland than in London."

"Oh, is she?" Barrie's face told all her doubt and disappointment. "But

I can't wait. I must go somewhere. If I don't take a train, Mrs. Muir

our housekeeper and perhaps Miss Hepburn may come here looking for me

from Hillard House. I'm afraid they found out at prayer-time that I'd

gone, and when they've searched all over the house and garden, they----"

"So you make no bones about running away from home, Miss MacDonald?"

"Neither would you in my place if you and your mother were insulted."

"Perhaps not," the man admitted. "I did something more or less of the

sort when I was a year or two older than you--about seventeen----"

"But I'm over seventeen already," Barrie hastened to boast. "I'm

eighteen."

The man smiled at her, his nicest smile. "Eighteen! That's very old, and

it's only living the retired life you have that's kept you young. Still,

there it is! You _have_ lived a retired life, and it's--er--it's left

its mark on you. It will take at least some months to efface it, even

under your mother's wing. That means you're a bit handicapped among a

lot of people who haven't lived retired lives. I don't advise you to go

back to your grandmother's house, because you wouldn't anyhow--and

besides, you know your own business better than I do; only, of course,

you'll have to write to her. As an acquaintance of your mother's, I'd

like to put you with some kind people for to-night until we can find out

for you just where Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald is. Don't you see that this

would be a sensible arrangement, if the people were all right, instead

of starting off on a wild-goose chase?"

"Ye-es, perhaps. And it's very kind of you to take an interest for my

mother's sake," said Barrie, trying not to show her disappointment

ungraciously.

"Of course, for your mother's sake," he repeated, with an expressionless

expression. "I call myself Somerled," he added, watching her face as he

made his announcement.

She caught him up quickly. "Why, that was the name of the great leader

from the North who founded the Clan MacDonald!"

"You know about him, do you--in spite of the retired life?"

"Not to know would disgrace a MacDonald. And just because I _have_ led a

retired life I've had more time to learn than girls in the world. I know

a good deal--really I do. I've read--heaps of things, behind Grandma's

back. Somerled of the Isles is a hero of mine. I didn't know any one had

a right to his name nowadays."

"I dare to bear it, like a Standard, with or without right, though

unworthily. Somerled of the Isles was my hero too."

"Then you're Scottish, like me," said Barrie. "I don't feel related to

Grandma's people, and I don't know anything about mother's. But if

you're going to be my friend for her sake, I'm glad your name is

Somerled. It's splendid!"

"Yes, it's splendid to be called Somerled," the man agreed, faintly

emphasizing the substituted word. "And I'm proud to be a Scot, though

I've lived half my life in America, and they think of me there as an

American. I've been thinking of myself that way too for seventeen years.

But blood's a good deal thicker than water, and I was born on the island

of Dhrum."

"Our island!" exclaimed Barrie. "That makes it seem as if we were

related."

"I hoped it would, because a Somerled has a right to the trust of a

MacDonald. Will you trust me to motor you to my friend Mrs. West, who's

stopping just now with her brother in a nice little house just outside

Carlisle? It's named Moorhill Farm, and belongs to a Mrs. Keeling, who

has lent it to Mrs. West. I'm going there, and they'll be glad to keep

you until we can learn where you ought to meet your mother. Perhaps you

know of Mrs. Keeling and her house?"

Barrie glanced at him half longingly, half doubtfully. She had been

looking forward to the adventure of travelling to London; but if there

were less chance of her mother being there than elsewhere, London was

wiped off the map. Still Barrie was loth to abandon her plan. To do so

was like admitting failure--in spite of the motor, which she would love

to try. She had never been within two yards of a motor-car.

"I've seen Mrs. Keeling in church," she said. "She has stick-out teeth.

Grandma bows to her. But how can you tell that Mrs. West will be glad to

have me?"

"I'll answer for her hospitality," came Somerled's assurance. "You'll

like Mrs. West. She's a widow, and a sweet woman. Her brother's as nice

as she is--Basil Norman. Perhaps you've heard of them? They write books

together--stories about travel and love and motor-cars."

"No," Barrie confessed. "I don't know any authors later than Dickens,

unless I see their names in book-sellers' windows, when I come into town

with Heppie--Miss Hepburn. If you don't mind, I think I'd rather not go

to Mrs. West's. I'm afraid of strangers."

"Are you afraid of me, then?"

"No-o. But you're a man. I'm afraid of women. They stare at your

clothes, and I know mine are horrid."

"Mrs. West won't stare. She'll help you buy pretty things to wear when

you go to your mother."

"Will she? But how shall I buy them? I haven't any money."

"You'll have money from your father's brooch. Now--will you trust me and

come to Mrs. Keeling's house, as your grandmother bows to her?"

"I'd rather go to a hotel, thank you."

"Nonsense. You can't go alone to a hotel."

"Why?"

"It wouldn't be proper for Miss MacDonald of Dhrum."

"Now you talk like Grandma!"

"I talk common sense. I'll lend you no money to spend in a hotel."

"Then take me to Mrs. West," the girl said, as she might have said,

"Take me to the scaffold."

Somerled laughed with amusement and triumph. He was astonishingly

interested in his adventure, astonishingly pleased at the prospect of

continuing it. Surely this girl was unique! He believed in comparatively

few things, but he believed in her: for not to do so would have been

indeed ungrateful, as she was ready to prove her implicit belief in him.

"A daughter of Mrs. Bal!" he said to himself as he led Mrs. Bal's

daughter to his motor-car.

Poor Barrie would have believed in almost any man who owned a motor.

IV

Aline West and her brother, Basil Norman, were walking slowly up and

down the garden path in front of the old-fashioned manor farmhouse lent

to them for ten days by an admiring friend. They were waiting for

Somerled, who had expressed a desire not to be met at the station; and

listening for the teuf-teuf of motors along the distant road prevented

Mrs. West from attending to her brother's suggestions. He had had an

inspiration for the new novel they were planning together, and was

explaining it eagerly, for Basil was a born story-teller. Only, he had

never found time for story-telling until lately. He was tremendously

happy in his new way of life, although only a terrible illness which had

closed others paths of success had opened this door for him. It did not

matter in the least that Aline got the credit. Not only was he glad that

she should have praise, but he was convinced that it ought to be hers.

If she had not thought of asking him to try his hand at helping her four

years ago, when the incentive to live seemed gone, he might have been

driven to put himself out of the way. It was to her, therefore, that he

owed everything; and though success as an author had never come to Aline

until after the first book they wrote together, that, to Basil Norman's

mind, was no more than a coincidence, and he had never ceased to feel

that she was generous in letting his name appear with hers on their

title pages.

"I wonder if anything can have happened to him!" Aline murmured.

"Which, Dick or Claud?" her brother asked, puzzled. Dick was to be their

hero, Claud the villain. Basil had been engaged in outlining the two

characters for his sister's approval.

"No. Ian Somerled," she explained almost crossly, though her voice was

sweet, because it was never otherwise than sweet. "Either the train's

late or----"

"I'd have met him with pleasure," Basil reminded her.

"It would be _fatal_ to do anything he didn't wish," she answered. "He's

a man who knows exactly what he wants, and hates to have people go

against his directions in the smallest things."

Norman looked at her rather anxiously through the soft summer darkness

that was hardly darkness. She was walking beside him with her hands

clasped behind her back and her head bent. He thought her extremely

pretty, and wondered if Somerled thought so too. But he wished that she

did not care quite so much what Somerled thought. And he was not sure

whether she were right about what Somerled liked.

"I wonder if we understand Somerled?" he asked, as if he were

questioning himself aloud. "After all, we don't know him very well."

"I do," Aline said. "I know him like a book. He's bored to death with

everything nearly. Only I--we--haven't bored him yet. And we must take

care not to."

"You could never bore anybody," Basil assured her loyally. "But--I wish

you'd tell me something honestly, old girl."

"Not if you call me that!" She laughed a little. "It wouldn't matter if

I were twenty-five instead of--never mind! I don't want people to think,

when they hear you, 'Many a true word spoken in jest.'"

"Somerled's older than you are, anyhow," Basil consoled her.

"I should think so--ages! Don't forget, dear, I'm only just thirty. I

don't look more, do I--truly?"

"Not a day over twenty-eight."

She was disappointed that he did not say less. She had been twenty-nine

for years, and had just begun, for a change, to state frankly that she

was thirty. She had never been able to forgive Basil for being younger

than she, but she could trust him not to advertise his advantage. He

really was a dear! She hated herself for being jealous of him sometimes.

There were things he could do, there were thoughts that came to him as

easily as homing birds, which were with her only a pretence: but she

pretended eagerly, sincerely, even with prayer. She really yearned to be

at heart all that she tried to make Somerled and other people believe

her to be. And if she tried hard to be genuine all through, surely in

time----

"What I want you to tell me is," Basil was going on, "are you in l--how

much do you really care about this man?"

"'This man?'" she repeated. "How serious that sounds; like 'Do you take

this man for better, for worse?' Well, I confess that I _should_, if he

asked me."

"Then you must be in love," her brother concluded. "Because you don't

need his money. We make as many thousands as we used to make hundreds;

and it's all yours, really, or ought to be."

She was ashamed of not contradicting him, yet she did not contradict.

She could not bear to put in words what in her heart she knew to be the

truth: that their success was due to Basil, the dreamer of dreams; that

her little smartnesses and pretty trivialities could never have carried

them to the place where they now stood together. The worst part of her

wanted Basil to think, wanted every one to think, that she was the

important partner, that she was actually _all_ in the partnership. And

it was too miserably easy to produce this impression. Basil was so

unassuming, thought so poorly of himself, realized so little how she

leaned upon him in their work, admired her so loyally!

"Ian Somerled is more of a man than any other man I ever met," she said.

"I like him for his strength and for his indifference. Everything about

him appeals to me--even his money; for making it in the way he did was

one expression of his power. Just because they say he'll never marry, I

want----"

"I can understand how a woman may feel about him," Basil said gently,

when she suddenly broke off.

"I thought I was perfectly happy the day he asked us to tour Scotland

with him in his car; and when he promised to spend a few days with us

here, after he'd got through his business in London," Aline went on, "it

was like _honey_ to hear him say that he didn't want to come if any one

else was to be here. He'd enjoy it only with you and me alone. But ever

since I saw him I've been worrying until I'm quite wretched."

"Worrying about what?"

"Whether he _suspects_ anything."

"Why, what is there to suspect?"

"Then _you_ don't? I'm glad, for you're both men. If you don't suspect,

why should he?"

"You'll have to tell me what you're driving at. I shan't have an easy

minute till you do--and that means I can't write. You know I won't give

you away."

"A woman wouldn't need telling. That's why I like men! You never

guessed, then, that I've been doing it all? I was the power behind the

throne. I made him invite us, and----"

"The deuce you did! Why, I heard him ask you. It was on board ship,

and----"

"And before he asked, unless you were deaf, you heard me say I couldn't

work up any enthusiasm about the next book we'd promised our publisher

to write because we'd sold our last car and hadn't time to make up our

minds about a new one, and we had no friends to give us good 'tips'

about the country. It was then he asked me what country we wanted to

write about, and I said Scotland."

"Well, yes, I suppose I heard you say all that, now you remind me of it.

But it wasn't hinting, because you didn't know he was going to Scotland

for his rest cure."

"Oh, yes, I did. I read it in the New York _Sun_ before we sailed. And

when I said we'd accept his invitation if he'd accept ours, Mrs. Keeling

hadn't offered me this house."

"You said she had."

"I was sure she would, because she told me I had only to ask. She was

dying to lend it. She wanted to be able to tell everybody that Aline

West and Basil Norman lived in her house for a fortnight in August. It's

a great feather in her cap; and Ian Somerled coming to visit us here is

something she'll _never_ get over as long as she lives. I marconied her

an hour after he'd said that he would come to us after London, and we'd

begin our motor tour from Carlisle. 'Twas only taking Time by the

forelock to tell him we _had_ been invited. It _was_ bad luck poor Mrs.

Keeling being ill when she got my wire, and she really was a trump to

turn out and go to a nursing home."

"Good heavens, is that what she did? I didn't know----"

"Of course not. But you needn't mind so dreadfully. She's _much_ more

comfortable in the nursing home with the best attention than in her own.

And, as a reward, we'll dedicate the book to her."

Aline said this as a queen might have suggested lending her crown to a

loyal servitor. Basil laughed, rather uncomfortably, and his sister

looked up hastily into his face, to see if he were making fun of her.

Just then they were drawing near the open windows of the drawing-room,

and the lamplight shone out so brightly through the old-fashioned

embroidered lace curtains that she could see his profile. Hers too was

clearly outlined as she lifted her chin anxiously.

The brother and sister were both good to look at, in ways so different

that the two made a striking contrast. Aline knew that in appearance

they were a romantic pair of travelling companions. Every one stared at

them when they were together, for he was very tall and dark, more like

an Italian or a Spaniard than an Englishman, and she was gracefully

slender and fair, dressing with a subtle appreciation of herself and all

her points. Aline West's and Basil Norman's photographs, taken together

or apart, for newspapers and magazines, were extremely effective, and

were considered by publishers to help the sale of their books. Norman

might have sat for Titian's Portrait of a Gentleman: and there were

those who thought Mrs. West not unlike Lady Hamilton. Since the first

expression of this opinion in print, she had changed the fashion of her

hair, and at fancy-dress balls, of which she was fond, she generally

appeared as the beautiful Emma. Certainly the cast of her features and

the cutting of her lips faintly recalled those of Romney's ideal; but

Mrs. West's pretty pale face had only two expressions: the one when she

smiled--always the same delicate curving of the lips which lit no beam

in the deep-set forget-me-not eyes; the one when she was grave and

wistfully intellectual. She had a beautiful round white throat which she

never hid with a high collar. Her hair was of that sun-in-a-mist gold

that eventually fades almost imperceptibly into gray--if left to itself.

But in Aline's case it was improbable that it would be left to itself.

Every morning when dressing she examined it anxiously, even fearfully,

to see whether it was becoming thinner or losing its misty glints of

gold. Yet she knew that her fears were likely to advance the day she

dreaded, and tried to shut them out of her mind.

"Why do you laugh?" she inquired almost irritably, for she was secretly

afraid always of missing something that was seen by others to be

amusing. She talked constantly of a sense of humour, pitying those not

blessed with it, but there were moments when she wondered bleakly if she

had it herself. "Have I said anything funny?"

"Only you seem so sure that the dedication will be a panacea for every

wound."

"So it will be for Mrs. Keeling."

"I thought you had the idea of dedicating it to Somerled, as he'll be

taking us through Scotland in his car."

"I had. But I feel now it would be a mistake. He couldn't refuse, and

one wouldn't be sure he was pleased. He's so horribly important, you

know. I don't mean in his own eyes, but in the eyes of the world; so

nothing we could do for him would really confer an honour. And the

reason he's cynical and bored is because people have fussed over him so

sickeningly, more and more every year, since he began to rise to what he

is."

"Yet I don't think he's conceited."

"Not in the ordinary way. But he can't help knowing that he's some one

in particular. He began to like us because we didn't fuss over him, or

seem to go out of our way to please him. That's where I've been clever;

for oh, Basil, I'd do anything short of disfiguring myself to win him."

"My poor girl!" Norman exclaimed.

She caught him up hastily. "Why do you call me 'poor?' Do you think I

shan't succeed? Do you think he'll never care?"

"You're a far better judge than I am," her brother answered evasively.

"Women feel such things. We----"

"You feel things, too. You know you do, Basil."

"In an abstract way--not when they're just in front of my eyes."

"He has told me a lot about himself, anyhow." Aline took up a new line

of argument, out of her own thoughts. "That's a good sign. He is so

reserved with almost everybody--and he was even with me till our last

evening on shipboard. I was telling him about Jim dying in India and

leaving me alone there, almost a girl; and how there was no money; and

how I took up writing and made a success. Then from that we drifted into

talk about success in general; and he told me his whole story--much more

than I'd ever heard from gossip, and a good deal of it quite different.

I took it as the greatest compliment that he should open his heart to

me--and a splendid sign."

"Yes, I suppose it was both," Norman agreed; and Aline had retired too

far within the rose-bower of happy memories to catch a suggestion of

doubt in his voice.

"I read once in a newspaper that he'd been a bootblack in Glasgow before

he emigrated," Mrs. West said, as they turned away from the house again

in their walk, and set their faces toward the distant gate. "It wasn't

true. His father was a crofter on a little island somewhere near Skye. I

think it's called Dhrum. I never heard of it before; and he had to

excuse my ignorance, because I'm Canadian! It seems that a branch of the

MacDonald family own the whole place and are great people there--lords

of the isle. His name was MacDonald too, though his family were only

peasants--clan connections, or whatever they call that sort of thing. I

don't understand a bit, and I didn't like asking him to explain. It was

too delicate a subject, though he appeared to be rather proud of his

origin. Scotch peasants are apparently quite different from other

peasants. You'll have to study up the differences and make lots of notes

for the book. I'm no good at anything with dialect, or character sort of

parts. You wouldn't think now, though, that Ian Somerled had ever been a

peasant would you? He talked a lot about his father and

mother--evidently he adored them. He said they'd be miracles anywhere

out of Scotland, but there were many like them there. According to him

there was nothing they hadn't read or couldn't quote by the yard, from

Burns and Scott back to Shakespeare. That was the way he was brought up,

and instead of wanting him to go on crofting like themselves, they were

enchanted because he drew pictures on their unpainted doors and their

whitewashed walls. They saved all their pennies to have him educated as

an artist, and encouraged him--quite different from peasant parents in

books. One day the 'meenister' called, and saw the boy's pictures. He

thought them something out of the ordinary--pictures of castles and

cathedrals they were, with people going in and coming out, and portraits

of friends, and historical characters. After that he took a great

interest in Ian, and taught him Latin and the few other things his

wonderful parents didn't happen to know. When Ian was about thirteen or

fourteen, the 'meenister' tried to get help for the little MacDonald

from the great MacDonald, a disagreeable, cranky old man with one

daughter. They thought they owned the whole world instead of one tiny

island, and the man wouldn't do anything for the child. He simply poured

contempt on 'clan ties.'"

"That doesn't sound like the great folk of Scotland," said Basil, who

for weeks had been reading little else but Scottish history, Scottish

fiction, and Scottish poetry, in order to get himself in the right frame

of mind for writing "the book." "I haven't come across a single instance

of their being purse-proud or snobbish."

"These weren't purse-proud, because their purses had nothing in them to

be proud of," Aline explained. "Their branch of the MacDonalds had lost

its money and its love of Scotland. Old Duncan MacDonald was the uncle

of the last lord of Dhrum, who had to go away from his island for good

and let his castle to 'aliens'--English people. When the nephew died

later, Duncan inherited, but never lived at Dhrum. He only came there

once in a while to visit the tenants who'd hired the castle from him, if

they happened to be people he knew, and would 'do' him well. He and his

daughter were mostly in London, where they had a flat, and prided

themselves on knowing no Gaelic. They took pains to show that they

considered the crofter's son a common brat, and resented the

meenister's' expecting them to do anything for his future, just because

his name happened to be MacDonald, and he lived in a hut on a remote

point of their island. Ian didn't lose courage, though; and soon after

the great snub he contrived to work his way somehow to Edinburgh. He

wouldn't take the money his father and mother had saved up for him,

because they were old and had been ill, and needed it themselves. But he

did all kinds of queer jobs, and at last walked into the studio of a

celebrated artist, saying he wanted to pay for some lessons. At first

the man only laughed, but when he saw Ian's drawings, he was interested

at once. He gave him lessons for nothing, and boasted of his protégé to

other artists. It seems that a talent for both portraiture and

architecture is very rare. When Ian was sixteen he won a big prize for

the design of an important building which a lot of prominent architects

had been trying for. Presently it came out that he was only a boy, a boy

who could do wonderful portraits, too, and everybody began taking notice

of him and writing enthusiastic praise in the papers. Some interviewer

falsely reported that he'd called himself a cousin of the MacDonald of

Dhrum, and disagreeable Duncan denied the relationship indignantly. He

spoke to some one of Ian's father, who had just then died, as 'an

ignorant old hay-cutter,' and the speech was repeated far and wide. You

can imagine Ian Somerled forgetting an insult to his adored father! He

dropped the name of MacDonald from that day, calling himself Somerled;

and as he was all alone in the world--his mother was dead, too, and had

never seen his success--he resolved to make a reputation in another

country. Of course that was very _young_ of him. He sees that now. He

crossed to New York in the steerage, and vowed he'd never set foot in

Scotland again, or take back his name of MacDonald, until old Duncan not

only openly claimed him as a cousin, but begged him as a personal favour

to return to Scotland."

"That must have seemed like sentencing himself to perpetual banishment,"

said Basil.

"I don't know. He appears to have had a kind of prophetic faith in his

own powers of success. And he was right in every way. Duncan began to

_grovel_ years ago."

In talking of Somerled, Aline had forgotten to listen for sounds of his

approach. She was interested in the story she was telling--more

interested than she was usually in the development of her own plots. But

luckily Basil saw to the plot-making nowadays, and she hadn't to worry.

"It's funny," she went on, "that a man who laughs at romance should be

one of the most romantic figures in the world. If you and I wrote up his

story, and took him for the hero, all the critics would say 'how

impossible!' But critics will never believe that anything highly

romantic or sensational can happen really. I don't know _what_ their own

lives must be like--or what they can think of the incidents they must

see every day in the newspapers! Somerled says the only romantic thing

he ever did was to annex the name of Somerled: but almost every phase of

his life would make a story. Take his success in America, for instance.

He wasn't eighteen when he landed as an immigrant, with nothing in his

pocket except what was left of the architectural prize. Most of that

money had gone in giving his father a few last comforts, and putting up

some wonderful, extravagant sort of monuments for both his parents,

which Ian designed himself. But he hadn't been two months in New York

when he won a still bigger prize, which came just as he was on the point

of starving! A handful of oatmeal and an apple a day _I_ should call

starvation, but he says it was grand for his health. In six years, at

twenty-four, he was not only the greatest portrait-painter in America,

but one of the most successful architects, an extraordinary combination

which has made him _unique_ in modern times. And before he was

twenty-eight came that big 'coup' of his, which he calls a 'mere

accident that might have happened to any fool'--the buying of a site for

a new town in Nevada, where he meant to build up a little city of

beautiful houses, and finding a silver mine. Of course, it _wasn't_ an

'accident.' It was the spirit of prophecy in him which has always

carried him on to success--that, and his grit and daring and enterprise

and general cleverness. Oh, Basil, if you could have heard him telling

me these things that last night on the _Olympic_--leaning back in his

deck-chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette (I was smoking too. I hate

it; but I think he likes a woman to smoke and be a man's pal), the

moonlight shining on his face, showing his eyes half shut, and talking

in his quietest way, as if he were dreaming it all over again, or

speaking to himself! I hardly breathed, till he broke off suddenly and

laughed in quite a shy sort of way, ashamed of being 'egotistical,'

though he hadn't praised himself at all. The flowery things I've said

are mine. He even apologized! I felt I'd never had so great a compliment

in my life. It seemed too good to be true that such a man should have

opened his heart to me. But when his invitation for Scotland came,

it--it set the seal of reality on the rest. Do you know, I can't help

believing he made more than he need of his business in London; that the

real truth was he wanted to stay there without us, and see how much he

missed me. Now he's coming to accept _our_ invitation, a day sooner than

he meant to at first. Something tells me the reason why. I shall know

for sure to-night, when I see him. He didn't want us to meet him at the

station. But that was perhaps because--I couldn't have gone very well

without you, and maybe----"

"I see! I'm to make myself scarce and leave you alone in the garden!"

"Not yet, dear. Only when we hear the car actually stopping at the gate.

There'll be plenty of time then. And if you don't mind----"

"Of course, I don't mind," said Basil. He felt that he was blushing

under the cover of darkness, and was thankful Aline could not see. Why

the blush, he could not have explained. Was it for his sister, because

she was managing her love affairs with a famous man in this energetic,

businesslike way, and jumping eagerly at conclusions? Or was it for

himself, because he was selfish and jealous of the new interest in

Aline's life, which would--if it ended as she hoped--take her away from

him and break their partnership?

He almost wished to accept the latter explanation. He would rather be

disappointed in himself than think meanly--oh, ever so little meanly--of

Aline.

Their partnership, begun when he was in the depths, regarding his life

as practically finished, had given him the greatest happiness he had

ever known. Memory flashed away at lightning speed over their travels

together, their adventures. Somerled's wife would not write novels. And

deep in his heart Basil knew that Aline's soul was not in the books, as

his was. He would not acknowledge this difference between them, but he

knew it was there. In old days, when Aline had written alone, she had

always chosen some subject that loomed large in public interest at the

moment, whether she herself cared about it or not, hoping to "come in on

the wave." Just because she had not really cared her scheme of work had

not given her success. So it had been with the idea of their first book

written together. Aline had wanted to plan out something to do with

motoring, about which every one was keen just then. She had proposed to

combine business with a cure for her brother; and when she had failed to

think of a "good plot on the right lines," he had made a suggestion

which flashed into his head. The joy of motoring, the wonder of travel,

both new to Basil, had intoxicated him. He wrote as one inspired, for

the sheer love of writing and telling what he had seen and felt. And the

world, catching the thrill of his joy, had shared it.

He did not say this to himself now, did not realize the truth of it, and

did not even believe that he could go on writing stories and succeeding

without Aline. Only, he knew that he loved his work for itself, and she

did not. That the light of his life would be gone without it, whereas

she would be glad to stop working and be idle as the admired wife of a

celebrity and a millionaire. In this he felt a vague injustice of fate

which depressed him--a rare state of mind for Basil Norman, to whom for

four years the world had been a happy and magically beautiful

dwelling-place.

"I hear a car now!" he exclaimed.

"It's his!" she answered. "I heard the siren when his chauffeur sounded

it going out of the garage. It's different from any others that pass

along this road. Good-bye for a little while, dear. You're so kind to

me! Wish me luck."

"I wish Somerled luck," he said, trying to laugh, as he turned and

marched quickly off toward the house.

Aline quite understood. He meant that Somerled would be lucky to get

her. That was nice of him, and like him, too, for Basil was as gallant

and chivalrous to his sister as a lover. Yet--she was sorry that he

hadn't wished her luck in so many words.

She walked toward the gate. The car had stopped.

V

Mrs. Keeling's place, lent to her much-admired authors, had a very

pretty gate. It was approached from the garden way, through an arbour

thickly hung with roses and honeysuckle. It seemed to Aline West, as she

went alone to meet Somerled, that night distilled a special perfume in

the dew-filled cups of the flowers, sweet as unspoken love. She felt

that she was on the threshold of happiness. It was the first step that

counted. If she met Somerled in the right spirit, with the right word

and the right look ... in this perfumed star-dusk and stillness, when

they had not seen each other for days ... and he knew she had been

waiting here for him, thinking of him ... and he saw that she had put on

the dress he liked so much on shipboard, the one she had worn the last

night, when he told her his life-story ... might not the thing that she

desired happen? She encouraged herself by saying, "Why not?" and

reminding herself that she was an attractive woman. Lots of men had been

in love with her--not the right ones, but that was a detail. Why not Ian

Somerled? He was a man, after all, like others.

He was at the gate already ... she almost ran.

"Hail, the conquering hero!" she cried to him, laughing.

He opened the gate. But it was not he who came in. He was opening it for

some one else--a woman, a girl, something tall and feminine, anyhow. It

was wrapped in a cloak. It had a flat pancake on its head for a hat.

What could it be, and mean? The idea darted into Aline's mind that there

had been an accident on the way here from the station; that perhaps

Somerled had nearly or quite run over this creature--or her dog--or

something.

"Hello, Mrs. West!" he answered her cheerfully. "I've got to you at

last, and I've brought a visitor for the night. I've given my guarantee

that you'll make her welcome."

The light of Aline's joy went out like a ray of moonlight swallowed up

by a marauding cloud. She did not in the least understand what had

happened, or what were the obligations to which he had committed her;

but in any case the lute she had tuned had a rift in it, a big, bad

rift, and it could make no music to-night. She felt suddenly at her

worst instead of her best, as if she had tumbled off a bank of flowers

in her prettiest frock into a bog. She longed to be cold and snappy and

disagreeable, as a wife may safely be to a husband when he has

blundered, and as she had often been to Jim in his brief day; but

Somerled was not her husband, and certainly never would be unless she

minded her "p's and q's" like a good and very clever little angel with

unmeltable butter in its smiling mouth. So she shrieked, "Hang it!" and

even worse, with her whole heart, and said with her lips, in a charming

voice, "Why, of _course_! I shall be delighted to welcome any friend of

yours, and so will Basil. I _love_ surprises."

It was a short arbour, and as they all three came out of it, Mrs. West

and Somerled and the wrapped-up thing with the pancake hat--the

chauffeur following with a suit-case--Aline's eyes made the most of the

starlight, that she might read the mystery and know the worst. The worst

was very bad. Under the stars the girl looked a radiant beauty, and so

young, so young! How was the man going to account for her? Was there

still hope?

"I told you what Mrs. West would say!" exclaimed Somerled. "This is Miss

MacDonald, a daughter of Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald."

"Oh!" said Aline. "How interesting! I'm delighted to meet her." She held

out her hand, and the girl, who had not yet spoken a word, put hers into

it.

There was no real reason why "I'm delighted to meet her" wasn't

precisely the nicest thing to say in the circumstances, but somehow as a

greeting it hadn't quite the right ring, Aline herself felt. And she was

sorry, because she wanted to be entirely satisfactory to Somerled in

every way, in all situations, no matter how trying, and thus perhaps

save the ship. Why not? Many men of thirty-four were bored with girls,

and Somerled must have been bored by them already in their thousands.

Still, something that lay deep down within herself was sad and anxious.

A daughter of the beautiful and almost notorious Mrs. Ballantree

MacDonald! If he weren't in love with the girl, perhaps he had had a

desperate love affair with the mother.

"I'd no idea that Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald had any children," Aline

went on, as she shook a supple, satiny hand which wore no glove.

"She's only got me," said the girl, "and she doesn't know she's got me

yet. At least, she may have forgotten."

Somerled broke out laughing. "You'll puzzle Mrs. West," he said, with a

good-natured, amused, and proprietary air which stabbed Aline's feelings

as with little sharp pins. No, whatever else he might be, he was not

bored. "We'll have to do a lot of explaining by and by, indoors."

"Oh, yes," Barrie agreed. And then, plunging into her task, "He found me

in the railway station. I've run away from home, and he wouldn't let me

go to a hotel. Don't you really mind? Because----"

"Of course I don't mind." Aline rose bravely to the occasion. "It sounds

wildly romantic, like most things that contrive to happen to Mr.

Somerled, although he says he's ceased to believe in romance. Have you

known each other long?"

"Only to-night," replied Barrie. And Somerled began to see that, as he

had said, there certainly would have to be a lot of explaining. It

almost seemed complicated. Nevertheless, he felt that he had done the

only thing possible, and so far from having regrets, he had a curious

sense of elation that was boyish. He wanted to see what was going to

happen next. He felt as if by some rather nice accident he had been

inveigled into playing a new game.

"I've known Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald ever since her first famous tour

through America some ten or twelve years ago," he said. "You'll be

amused, Mrs. West, to hear in what a queer way I ran across her daughter

to-night."

"Yes, indeed, no doubt," answered Aline, as they walked toward the

house. She was forcing herself to cheer up a little. His tone in

speaking of the actress didn't sound like the tone of a man in love. And

men of his type, who had been run after and spoilt, surely didn't fall

in love at sight. It was going to prove no more than an annoying

incident, this bringing home of a strange girl, who mightn't be so

desperately pretty, anyhow, in a bright light. To-morrow the creature

would be packed off to her mother or some one; and in a day or two more

Somerled and Basil and she--Aline--would start off on their heavenly

trip as if nothing had happened.

But Barrie was even prettier in the lamplight of the hall and

drawing-room than she had been in the silver vagueness of starlight.

Aline tried to think that she was the weirdest frump in the world, and

absolutely impossible as a fascinator; but she knew that the weirdness

would be superficial to the eye of Man. The thing was to hurry her away

in all her frumpiness.

Aline brought them into the low-ceiled drawing-room which, with her own

hands, she had made beautiful with many flowers in honour of Somerled's

coming. She and Basil had been here for several days, while Somerled

attended to business in London, and she had been looking forward to her

friend's comments upon this drawing-room. She had imagined his

exclaiming: "You've made it look like yourself!" But the girl had

spoiled her effects. Somerled merely said, "What a pretty, old-fashioned

room! The green wall is a becoming background." And when he uttered this

comment it was at his vagabond he looked, not at his hostess.

Barrie was rather remarkable against that green. She glanced around,

evidently in rapt admiration of everything she saw. Her eyes were very

bright and big, her young, red lips a little apart. "Silly thing, gaping

with her mouth open!" Aline relieved her feelings by saying to herself.

"Oh, it's so beautiful here, and Mrs. West's dress is so lovely," the

girl said; "it makes me feel I must take off this horrid cloak and tam,

not to be a blot. May I take them off?" she asked Aline, turning frank

admiration on her, as one turns on a searchlight.

Aline would have liked to think of some reason for saying "no," such as

a draught, or an immediate departure for upstairs; but even if the

excuse had been valid enough, it would have been of no use, for without

awaiting permission, which she took as a matter of course, the weird

creature had whipped off her green pancake and was throwing back her

cloak. "Not that my dress isn't nearly as bad," she apologized, sighing.

"I have never seen such a pretty room as this."

It was really nothing wonderful by way of a room: a little oak

panelling; faded green brocade walls; some nice old pastels; furniture

of the Stuart period; pretty bright chintz; a few old Chelsea figures on

the mantel and in a cabinet; quantities of red and white roses in

Chinese bowls. Aline ached to snap, "If you've never seen anything as

pretty as _this_, where have you lived?" But that was not the way of

Somerled's ideal woman. It would have been better if the stupid thing

had praised Mrs. West's looks, thus riveting Somerled's eyes and

appreciation; but all her silly admiration seemed to be for the dress

and the room. Little brute! Incapable of calling another female pretty,

when a man was present. Just what one would expect of an actress's

daughter, especially _that_ actress, if half one heard of "Mrs. Bal"

were true.

Aline was inclined to believe that Barrie MacDonald had purposely posed

herself under a hanging lamp, so as to show off her hair when suddenly

uncovered. The daughter of an actress, with the dramatic instinct in her

blood! But the idea did not seem to occur to Somerled, experienced as he

was, disillusioned as he thought himself. At least there was nothing

cynical in the expression of his face.

"Do let me help you with your cloak," she said to Barrie, dimly hoping

that the man would contrast her exquisitely corseted figure in its dress

by Lucille with the crude, untrained outlines clothed in blue serge. She

was not so tall as Barrie as they stood together, she discovered, and

she wanted the girl to sit down. "You must both have something to eat,"

she went on, pulling the old-fashioned bead embroidered bell rope; and

tears were close and hot behind her eyes, remembering how she had

planned the little supper for herself and Somerled--and Basil, who

hardly counted. "Or would you like to see your rooms first? One shall be

made ready directly for Miss MacDonald. I suppose her luggage has come

in with yours?"

"I have only a--a parcel," Barrie meekly confessed, feeling three times

a worm, even a Laidly Worm. It was odd how this sweet-faced blond woman,

with blue eyes and a halo of fair hair and a gentle smile, contrived--of

course without meaning it--to make one feel the meanest, shabbiest thing

cumbering a beautiful world! "I wonder if I'm going to like men better

than women?" she thought.

"Ah, a parcel," repeated Aline daintily, as an incredibly neat maid

answered the call of the beaded bell. "Moore," Mrs. West went on, "this

young lady, Miss MacDonald, will spend the night. I think she might have

the room of the red Chinese chintz at the end of my corridor. Please

have it made ready as soon as possible, and----"

"Oh, is your name Muir?" exclaimed Barrie delightedly. "That's the name

of our housekeeper at Hillard House. Perhaps you're related, though I

never _heard_ of Mrs. Muir having any daughters or nieces."

The maid, deftly taking the cue from her mistress _pro tem._, put into

her impersonal gaze the coldness of a whole glacier as her eyes moved

from defect to defect of Barrie's costume. The tone of that "Ah, a

_parcel_," was unmistakable, and she knew exactly what Mrs. West thought

of Miss MacDonald. "I am sorry, miss, but I do not think, I am related

to your housekeeper," she replied; and Aline determined to give her a

blouse or half a dozen handkerchiefs. She really was a most intelligent

person. So intelligent was she that she knew by the feeling in her bones

exactly how much Mrs. West wanted to get Miss MacDonald out of the

drawing-room and into the Chinese room, which would be the most

unbecoming in the house to a red-haired person. "I can take the young

lady up now, if you wish, madam," she continued, "for the room is in

order--only to bring towels and hot water."

Barrie looked pleadingly at Somerled. "I am quite clean," she said. "I

washed at home before I started. And I'm _so_ hungry."

Her appeal to him as a tried and trusted friend waked up something in

Somerled which he had not known existed. Whatever it was stirred and was

soft and warm in the region of his heart.

"I'm sure Mrs. West doesn't want to send you away," he said. And he

could have said nothing more tactless. "I, too, am comparatively

spotless," he went on, protecting his protégée by putting himself on her

level, "and superlatively hungry. We shall both be delighted to accept

your invitation to supper." He laughed, and Barrie gave him a grateful,

understanding glance. He felt as if she were a wonderfully pretty doll

which had somehow come alive after he had bought and rescued it from an

upper shelf in an unworthy toy-shop--a dear, delightful, untamed doll

which now belonged to him; and he was not sure that he wanted to let

anybody else play with it until he had begun to tire a little of its

tricks himself. Of course he'd tire in time; but there would not be time

for tiring, because the doll must soon be packed off and sent to its

mother.

"Tell Mr. Norman that Mr. Somerled has come, and that we're ready for

supper," said Aline to Moore. The eyes of mistress and maid met, and for

an instant they were social equals.

Basil Norman was a man who had odd thoughts and enjoyed them. For this

reason he did not weary of his own society, for he never quite knew what

he would think next. When he came to the door and pushed it open, he

half believed that he was dreaming the tall, beautiful, badly dressed

girl with torrents of red hair. People in real life did not wear their

hair in torrents. Perhaps she was a ghost who went with the house, and

he had never happened to see her before. He wondered if the others had

noticed her yet.

"How are you, Somerled?" he inquired, not taking his eyes off the

apparition. It was looking at him, too, almost anxiously, as if it were

wondering whether he would be friend or foe; but, of course, it did not

speak.

"All right. Very glad to see you both again--and to be here," Somerled

answered.

"Miss MacDonald," announced Aline, thin-lipped.

"So you have a name?" said Basil to Barrie. "Was it given to you in

dreamland or the spirit-world?" Then she knew at once that he was not a

foe, but a friend.

"Fairyland," she replied, beaming on him. "I was in fairyland to-day. If

I hadn't been there, I shouldn't be here." She could answer her own late

question now, with practical certainty. She _was_ going to like men

better than women! Her mother, of course, would be an exception.

VI

It was a delicious little supper that Mrs. West had ordered in

Somerled's honour, yet for some mysterious reason, thoroughly understood

only by Aline, nobody did justice to it or enjoyed it much. Perhaps

there was thunder in the air, which upset the nerves of every one, even

the nerves of Moore, who spilt _bouillon_ on Miss MacDonald's sleeve.

This was the explanation which occurred to Basil; and certain it was

that the sky had suddenly clouded over, hiding all the stars.

"I do hope we're not going to have rain for our trip," he remarked, more

for the sake of something to say than because, even if rain came, it

were likely to last. "It's just the ticklish time of the month for

weather, you know: to-morrow we shall have the new moon."

"The heather moon!" Barrie said softly, looking out of the open window

at the purple night, purple as heather.

"What do you mean by a heather moon?" asked Basil, interested. "It

sounds sweeter than honeymoon."

"It's the sweetest moon of the year," the girl answered. "The moon when

all the most beautiful things ought to happen to the people who are

worthy of them--and the honeymoon can't come till afterward. I've always

wanted something romantic to happen to me in the heather moon; yet

nothing ever has, so far. It couldn't, at Grandma's!"

"But you haven't explained the heather moon," Basil reminded her.

"Don't you _really_ know?" She opened her eyes very wide as she smiled

at him in a friendly, childlike way; and Basil and Somerled forgot that

there was a Mrs. West in the room. It was a momentary lapse of memory,

but Aline felt it electrically. She was enraged at Basil, and disgusted

with Barrie, though merely grieved with Somerled.

"_There's_ a minx for you!" thought Moore, who was plain, and had been

chosen by Mrs. Keeling because her teeth stuck out more than the lady's

own.

"Wait! I believe, as a good Scotsman, I can guess," said Somerled. "The

heather moon's the moon of August, the moon when the heather's in its

prime of bloom."

"Yes!" cried Barrie, joyous that it should be he, her first friend, the

friend of her mother, who had solved the puzzle. "That's it: and it's

the moon for falling in love. That's why the honeymoon has to come

afterward." Then, seeing that Mrs. West was looking at her with a look

that might mean astonishment or disapproval, she blushed. It was queer,

but for a minute that pretty, quite young woman--if widows could be

called _quite_ young--had an expression almost like Grandma's.

"Oh, I do hope I haven't said anything horrid?" Barrie appealed from one

to another. "You see, I never dared say anything at all about love

before Grandma or Heppie, but it is talked about so _much_ in books, I

thought I might mention it in company. I'm sorry if I've not been

maidenly, which Miss Hepburn is always telling me I'm not."

"I suspect most maidens think a good deal about love whether or no they

talk of it, don't they, Norman?" said Somerled.

"How should I know?" Basil asked.

Both men were different from their everyday selves to-night. They seemed

self-conscious.

"Why, it's your business to know. You write novels. Or do you leave all

the love parts to your sister?"

"I suppose widows may talk as much as they like about love," said Barrie

reflectively, "having had it and passed it by."

The creature was pretending to take for granted that widows were poor,

_passée_ things who had lived their lives and could have no more

personal interest in heather moons or honeymoons! Mrs. West grew pale,

and was angry with herself for caring. Barrie made her feel faded--a

"back number." She told herself that if she could not get rid of this

girl the first thing to-morrow, she should be ill.

"You must ask your mother these questions, and she'll answer them better

than I can," Aline said in her pretty voice, with her gentle smile.

Already she had heard from Barrie and from Somerled something of the

girl's story, and knew that through family misunderstandings mother and

daughter had been separated for years. "You must be _so_ impatient to

see her!" she went on.

"I am," said Barrie.

"I know Sir George Alexander a little," Aline answered. "He may take a

curtain-raiser of ours; and it's occurred to me to telegraph him in the

morning, as soon as the post-office opens. He'll be able to let us know

where Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's acting. We won't trust to the stage

papers alone. It would be a pity to keep this child in suspense a minute

longer than necessary. Don't you think it's a good plan, Mr. Somerled?"

"Very," he agreed. It was a good plan. And it _would_ be a pity to keep

the child in suspense. The pretty doll must be packed up and sent away

where it belonged, whereupon everything would go on as before. And the

heather moon would begin to shine gold on purple, for the trip through

bonny Scotland, which he had planned. He had been looking forward to the

tour, not with keen enthusiasm indeed, but with interest. He had been

satisfied with the companions he had chosen, and the fact that they

wanted to see Scotland had given him an incentive for taking the rest

cure he had been imperatively ordered, in his native land rather than

elsewhere. Once, long ago, self-exiled at the age of Barrie MacDonald,

he had passionately yearned for his "ain countree," and often regretted

the boyish vow he was too proud and obstinate to break. But years had

passed now since Duncan MacDonald and his daughter Margaret visited

America to find themselves worth knowing only as kinsfolk of the

despised peasant. Accepting the situation because of its advantages and

his necessities, the old man had ignored the past and "made up" to the

young millionaire artist. Ian's sense of humour had been so tickled

that, to his own surprise, he had laughed and forgotten his youthful

rancour. It struck him as distinctly funny that he had ever taken old

Duncan's waspishness seriously enough to make vows of any sort because

of it. And he saw that indirectly he owed fortune to the haughty lord of

Dhrum. It had amused Somerled a good deal and pleased him a little that

"his highness" (as he called the great one) should implore the "peasant

brat" to become tenant of Dunelin Castle for an unlimited term of years;

that Duncan should chat to newspaper men of his "distinguished relative

Ian MacDonald, who had won fame under the very suitable _nom de guerre_

of Somerled"; and that "Cousin Ian" should be pressed to meet "Cousin

Margaret." It was a queer world, and nobody in it was queerer than one's

self. So Somerled had felt when, just because the miracle had happened

to free him of his vow, he no longer pined to gaze upon his native

Highlands. He felt at home and happy enough in America; and if being

"happy enough" wasn't quite the beautiful state he had pictured as a

boy, it was full of interest. He had taken Dunelin Castle off its

owner's hands at a high yearly rent, in order that no rich and vulgar

Cockney should become the tenant, but he had never stayed there, though

once, even to have the right of entrance would have seemed a fairy

dream. There were no such things as fairy dreams for him since he had

thoroughly grown up, because in the process of becoming a millionaire he

had ceased to believe in any kind of dreams. Friendships and sympathies

he had vainly longed for in his poverty could be his for the asking or

even without the asking now; and that was the reason he did not feel

they were worth having. He had no use in his heart for little brothers

and sisters of the rich, and in his experienced hardness he was

sometimes unjust to kindly people. But he had liked the novels of Aline

West and Basil Norman before he met the two popular Canadian authors on

shipboard; and learning that they planned to write a "Scotch book," it

had occurred to him that they might all three go about sight-seeing

together. His rest cure had ceased to bore him in prospect; he had

thought with some pleasure of showing Aline Dunelin Castle and the

island of Dhrum. Suddenly, however, Aline's own words damped the

prospect as with a douche of cold water.

She was perfectly right, too. It would be a very good plan to place the

waif he had picked up as soon as possible in the care of a mother, even

such an extraordinary, incredible mother as Mrs. "Bal" MacDonald: a good

plan for the girl's sake, and for everybody's sake, because it was

arranged to start for Scotland the day after to-morrow. Still, Barrie's

impromptu ode to the heather moon had for a moment irradiated his mind

with a light such as had not shone for Somerled on land or sea since he

had become rich enough to afford the most expensive lighting. Then as

quickly it had died down. He saw himself spinning agreeably through

Scottish scenes with Mrs. West and her brother, and suddenly,

treacherously, he felt that to spin agreeably was not enough to satisfy

him, that it was unworthy of wondrous golden light on purple hills of

high romance. He wanted something more, something altogether different,

and the plans which had contented him looked dull as ditchwater in the

fading glamour. He himself looked dull. Aline looked dull, and for a

moment he almost disliked her sweet blue eyes, her pretty, ever gentle

smile, behind which must lurk some true feeling, or she could not write

those delicately charming books.

"And don't you think, too," Aline urged kindly, "that we ought to put

Miss MacDonald's poor grandmother out of her misery? I might write a

note to--Hillard House, I think she said?--explaining--er--what has

happened, as well--as well as I could? Let me see, what _would_ be best?

Oh, I could say that by accident her granddaughter had met a guest of

mine, a friend of Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's; that she wasn't to worry,

because, though her granddaughter refused to return, we would see that

the child reached her mother safely, by to-morrow night if possible. I

can mention Basil, and say we are the writers. If she has heard of us,

that may relieve the poor lady's mind."

"Grandma hasn't heard of you, I'm sure," said Barrie, "unless you write

religious books; but she won't _need_ her mind relieved. While I was

with her, I think she considered it her duty to take strict care of me;

but now I've gone my own way, she'll see it was predestined. It was just

the same with a Dresden china teapot she inherited. She didn't approve

of it because it was too gay, but she always washed it herself because

it was her father's. When it broke in spite of her, she wouldn't have it

mended, and told Heppie to throw the pieces away."

"Nevertheless, I must write, and send the letter to Hillard House by

hand," Aline insisted. "If I didn't do that I should not be able to

sleep." She spoke with fervour, for she felt that she must have two

strings to her bow. If "Mother" failed, she must be able to fall back on

"Grandma."

VII

Barrie meant to be up and dressed before any one else in the house, but

she lay awake until long after midnight, an unprecedented thing for her,

and in consequence slept late, making up her accustomed nine hours.

Usually she fell asleep at ten or soon after, and jumped briskly out of

bed at seven, waked only by her eager desire for renewed life, in a

perfectly new day which no one else had ever seen yet. This morning it

was a repeated knocking at the door which mingled with her dreams and

shook her out of them. What door could it be? Where was she? the girl

wondered for a dazed instant. Then Moore appeared with a breakfast-tray.

"Mrs. West said not to wake you for early tea," she explained with a

glacial coldness worthy of Hillard House. "Madam and the two gentlemen

are having breakfast out of doors in the summer-house; and when you get

up, miss, I advise you to draw your curtains well across the windows or

you may be seen."

Barrie wished that she too were having breakfast in the summer-house,

and thought it mistaken kindness on the part of Mrs. West not to have

her called. But, from Aline's point of view, there was no mistake. "I

have let the child sleep," she explained to Somerled and Basil. "It _is_

such a child, isn't it? And when she wakes up there may be a wire in

answer to mine, which went before eight."

When ten o'clock struck and still the telegram had not arrived, Aline

asked herself if she oughtn't to go and call on old Mrs. MacDonald, who

had deigned to take no notice of her tactfully expressed letter. Just

then, however, Somerled's chauffeur was seen hovering in the flowery

distance. He had brought two stage papers which his master had sent him

out to buy. Aline was not pleased that Somerled had thought it necessary

to get information on his own account. She would have preferred that he

should trust to her; but she tried to think that perhaps he too was

secretly tired of the girl and wanted to be rid of her. While he was

glancing through the first paper, Moore glided into the summer-house

with a brick-coloured envelope on a silver tray. It was addressed to

Aline, and she opened it quickly, glad to be ahead of Ian with news.

Then she found herself confronting an unexpected difficulty. "Mrs. B. M.

trying new play small towns; will open Edinburgh in five or six days."

With something like a gasp, Aline stopped on the brink of reading the

telegram aloud. Who would have thought of this?

Her brain worked quickly. She didn't want Somerled to know that "Mrs.

Bal" was so near. He might--make some ridiculous proposal about the

girl--Heaven alone knew what! Men were capable of anything. The

troublesome creature must really go back to her grandmother at once.

Mrs. Bal could easily come to Carlisle and collect her--like lost

luggage--if she cared to be burdened with such luggage. If only Aline

could find some excuse to make Somerled put down that paper and

forthwith go into the house!

"Is your telegram from Sir George?" he inquired calmly, looking up from

the paper which she longed to snatch.

For half a second she hesitated, and then said, "No. It's not what I

expected." This was almost true.

Basil was gazing at her with solicitude. He thought that she had turned

pale. "No bad news from any one, I hope, dear?" he asked.

"It is annoying," she replied with reserve, and crumpled up the

telegram. "I was stupid to let Moore go--I must send an answer. Mr.

Somerled, it would be too good of you to look for a form on the desk in

the drawing-room."

"Shan't I----" began Basil.

"I must ask your advice, meanwhile, about what I'm to say," she cut him

short. Somerled put down the paper on the rustic seat, got up with

alacrity, and started for the house. He would be back in three or four

minutes, and not one of those minutes ought to be wasted. "Don't bother

with questions," she said to Basil, "but if you love me, make those

theatrical papers disappear before Mr. Somerled can read them. I'm going

to change my mind and follow him into the house to write my telegram.

I'll keep him a while talking. If he comes looking for his papers, I

want them to be gone. I depend on you!"

Without waiting for Basil's promise, she darted away in order to

intercept Somerled before he could finish his errand in the

drawing-room. Of course, it would be easy for him to buy more papers,

but before he could get them, Aline was hoping to have maneuvered the

embarrassing Miss MacDonald out of the house. She counted that Ian would

be long in finding the forms, because men never could find the simplest

things when told to look for them; but Somerled was an exception, and

she only just caught him on the threshold. "After all, I want your

advice instead of Basil's," she said. "Do sit here where we shall be

quiet, and let me consult you." She patted the arm of a big

chintz-covered sofa invitingly, and as she sat down Ian followed suit.

Still she did not know what on earth to say to him. She hoped for an

inspiration at the last instant, as Basil had taught her to do in

arranging a difficult situation between hero and heroine. She wanted to

play heroine now with Somerled as hero. Oh, how much she wanted it!

She took a long breath which _must_ bring that inspiration at the end of

it, if inspiration were to be of use. And it came at command, as things

good or bad do come if intensely desired. But it was such a thoroughly

objectionable inspiration that she hardly dared snap at it as she

wished, for Aline was not malicious, and disliked malice and all

uncharitableness as she disliked smearing her pink and white fingers

with ink. Still, no alternative idea occurred to her, and Somerled was

waiting. In desperation she had to take what offered, excusing herself

to herself with every word she spoke. Yet through all she could not help

thinking that she was clever, that she had marvellous presence of mind,

and that she was displaying an inventive faculty which would have

surprised Basil, though, of course, he must never know, because men were

often as idiotically conscientious about little things as they were

unscrupulous about big ones.

"The telegram that came was from Mrs. MacDonald, the child's

grandmother," she heard herself explaining, not forgetting, in her

mental confusion, to rub in the impression of Barrie's unfledged youth.

"I was surprised at not hearing, but this wire is an answer to my

letter. The old lady goes into no particulars, but she says: 'Gravest

reasons why my granddaughter should not join her mother. Hope you in

person will bring her back to me.' Now, dear Mr. Somerled, the little

girl is your protégée. It's for you to say what's to be done with her."

Somerled did not reply at once. He sat thinking, his hands thrust deep

in his pockets, making a jingling noise with keys or silver, which in

her present mood got upon Aline's nerves extraordinarily. She felt that

if he did not stop jingling and begin to speak she should scream. If he

asked to see the telegram, she was prepared to say that she had torn it

up, as an excuse not to show it to Basil, on second thoughts the affair

appearing to be Somerled's business. Somerled did not, however, make the

request, and Aline was spared an extra fib, at which she was

unreasonably pleased.

"Well?" she controlled herself to murmur, instead of screaming.

"I should feel a traitor to give the girl up," he said. "In fact, I

can't do it unless she agrees. I promised not even to advise her that

she ought to go back. She trusted me when I brought her here."

"Shall _I_ have a little talk with her?" Aline suggested, and never had

her voice been so kind and sweet. Indeed, in her trembling hope, she was

willing to be sweet and kind--with limitations.

Somerled thought again for a minute, jingling more horribly than ever.

Then, just at screaming-point once more for Aline, he said decidedly,

"No, thank you. From what Miss MacDonald's told us, it's natural her

grandmother should think there are grave objections to Mrs. Bal as a

guardian; but the old lady's two generations at least behind the age.

Youth's at the prow nowadays, and--a mother's a mother, anyhow. We'll

have to give Mrs. Bal a chance to do the maternal act----"

"She may be far, far away, even in America--or Australia," Aline

objected. "And even if----"

"Oh, Mr. Somerled, mother's coming to Edinburgh!" cried a voice at the

long window, and Barrie appeared, waving a newspaper.

The one unforeseen thing had happened. The vagabond had strayed into the

summer-house and beguiled Basil. Aline knew too well what excuse he

would make if accused: "Why, you didn't tell me _she_ wasn't to look at

the papers!"

"I've seen the name, 'Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald,'" the detestable girl

went on, pushing into the room without asking permission. "She's going

to 'open,' as the paper expresses it, in a new play called 'The Nelly

Affair,' on Monday night at the Lyceum Theatre. Next Monday! Nearly a

week from now! How can I wait--what shall I do till then?"

It was to Somerled that she appealed. She made him feel that the

responsibility was his. And it was a bad moment to feel this, because of

Mrs. West's telegram from Grandma. He got up from the sofa, still

jingling the money in his pockets. Looking down at Aline he saw only her

profile and an ear as deeply pink as coral under a loop of blond hair.

Evidently she too was feeling the situation. Good of her to take an

interest! She really was good. She had asked his advice. Now he would

ask hers.

"Mrs. West and I will talk over a plan I have for you," he said to the

girl.

"Is it your plan--or hers?" asked Barrie anxiously.

"It will be both by the time you hear it," he answered, with a

reassuring smile.

Aline humoured him. "Run away and play, little girl, till the plan is

cooked," she gayly cried. "Play with my brother."

Barrie backed out, feeling as if she had been half smothered with a

perfumed pillow.

"Do you guess my plan?" asked Ian.

"I wonder?" Aline murmured. She could not have spoken aloud just then.

"It's this. Why shouldn't we take her with us in the car to Edinburgh?

We've lots of room."

She had known that this would come. All she had done had only hastened

the catastrophe. "That poor old lady," she stammered. "I can't help

sympathizing--being a little sorry for her. Isn't she, then, to be

considered--after bringing up the girl?"

"You think," he said reflectively, "that she ought to be consulted?"

"Oh, I do!"

"Very well. Then I'll go and have it out with her myself."

"The telegram!" thought Mrs. West, her ears more coraline than ever.

"After all," she faltered, "perhaps it would bring about complications.

She might resort to--to something legal. Fancy if she sent the police to

get back her granddaughter."

Somerled laughed and said nothing. He was not in a mood for argument.

"He won't go," Aline thought. "Thank Heaven, he hates bother."

This was true of Somerled as a rule; but his rules had exceptions.

VIII

So this was the garden where that strange flower of girlhood had budded

and blossomed. All at once Barrie, in her quaintness, became a readable

riddle to Somerled.

The two gates in the high wall were kept bolted, but there was a

jangling bell for each, the gate for visitors (it was almost

supererogatory), and the gate for tradesmen and servants. An elderly and

sullenly astonished woman opened the visitors' gate for Somerled, and

made of her lean form a barrier lest he should try to pass. But she

being narrowly built, on somewhat Gothic lines, and the gateway being

broad, Somerled saw past the flying buttresses of her skirts into the

background. And it was this background that explained in a flash why the

girl knew less of life than a bird which has learned to use its wings;

also the reason why she could never return to waste her young years

behind the garden wall of Hillard House. The thought came into

Somerled's mind that it would be interesting to show her the world she

had never seen, not only between Carlisle and Edinburgh, but over the

hills and far away, as far as the purple island of Dhrum, set in its

sunset frame of ocean gold--or even farther. That could not be, of

course, but the picture was pleasant.

He had prepared himself to be ingratiating; but he realized that

ingratiation was not a successful line to pursue with dragons. Instead

of inquiring politely if Mrs. MacDonald were at home, he said bluntly,

"I wish to see Mrs. MacDonald; I have business with her--not my

business, but hers. And you may tell her I am not The MacDonald of

Dhrum, but _a_ MacDonald from Dhrum, a very different thing."

He knew well that the name of Somerled would be no "Open Sesame" to this

door, and he rather enjoyed the knowledge. It was clear at once that he

had used the right key. Perhaps no other would have served a stranger.

Anna Case was not a Scotswoman, but the name of MacDonald was respected

within these gates, no matter who bore it, and this dark man, with the

blue eyes that went through you like bright steel blades, didn't look

like one who would claim what he had no right to claim. She bade him

follow her into the house, which he did; into the hall; and so to a

drearier drawing-room than he had ever entered. There had perhaps been

some as gray and grim on his island of Dhrum; but in those days he had

known nothing of drawing-rooms.

This was not even early Victorian. It was mid-Victorian, and rubbing and

brushing had given the ugly furniture no time to mellow. He sat down on

a horsehair-covered sofa which had two worked worsted cushions, each

stiffly upright in its corner. One represented a dog's head, the other a

bunch of white and yellow flowers with a cold background of steel beads.

On the walls hung a few steel engravings; a meeting of Covenanters;

portraits of unco' guid worthies with sidewhiskers or beards; and some

tortured stags pursued or caught by hounds.

"Terrible!" he groaned in spirit. "Who'd suppose that such things

existed nowadays?"

He might appropriately have made much the same criticism of the old

woman who at that instant opened the door and came in, sturdily, in

spite of her limp and the stout stick grasped in a knuckly hand. But as

their eyes met--hers like thick glass panes behind which a burning fire

could be dimly seen--something in her grim spirit spoke to something as

grim and uncompromising far down his nature. To his own surprise he felt

awaking in himself a queer impulse of sympathy for the redoubtable

Grandma. Perhaps, reluctantly, she felt the same for him. But she looked

him in the face, keenly and unblinkingly. "Well, sir," she said, in a

deep voice almost like a man's, and amazingly young and vital, "well,

sir, I do not recognize you, though you have gained entrance to my house

by claiming the name of MacDonald."

"That is true," replied Ian, who had risen at her coming. "It's the

first time I've claimed the name for many years, though it is mine and

was my father's before me."

"Who was your father?" the old woman catechized him. "What kin to

Duncan, my dead husband's half-brother?"

"No kin except by clan ties. You wouldn't have heard of us. My father

was a crofter. His name was David."

"I well remember that man," said Mrs. MacDonald, "and his wife too when

I lived with my husband on the island in my youth. Let me see--Mary her

name was. They were God-fearing folk, and didn't wear any such grand

clothes as you do, not even for their Sunday best."

"I paint people's portraits, you see, and have to live in cities,"

explained Ian calmly, though he had grown lazy as he grew rich and had

not painted. "My clothes suit my trade and way of life better than my

father's would, I think; though, as for my brains, my father's hat would

have been too big for them."

"I dare say you are right about the brains. You are that youth who went

off to America under the name of Somerled," Mrs. MacDonald severely

remarked. "I have read of you in the newspapers; but I never approved of

you, sir. It's not man's work, to my mind, smearing canvas with paint,

and encouraging silly women to be vain of their faces."

"My portraits aren't considered to have that effect," returned Somerled;

"rather the contrary, in some cases. And I'm sorry you don't approve of

me, because that makes a bad opening for what I've come to say. However,

it can't be helped. I know Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald slightly; met her

in America----"

"If you think an acquaintance with that woman will recommend you to me,

sir, you are mightily mistaken," was the answer he got.

"I mention it to make you understand why, when I met her daughter last

night, I felt it my duty to do what I could, being of the same name and

not quite a stranger to the family."

"Oh, you felt it your duty! Then you're the person mentioned in a letter

I received from a certain Mrs. West, according to herself a writer of

books. I do not read her sort of books, and never heard of her. 'Motor

novels' indeed! What worse than nonsense! Little enough sense fools must

have to buy them! If you have come from this Mrs. West, you can tell her

from me, as she has made her bed she may lie in it. She has not taken

under her roof my granddaughter, but the daughter of Mrs. Ballantree

MacDonald, the play actress. I did my best for the girl, striving to

bring her up to be a good and modest woman, despite the bad blood of the

mother who broke my son's heart and killed him, who did what she could,

and has been doing what she could in the years since, to disgrace our

house. I might have known I should strive in vain, and I did know at

heart. Vanity and extravagance and fondness of pleasure were Barbara

Ballantree's undoing. I preserved her daughter from those dangers, and

gave her a religious education. Levity was sternly rebuked in her. She

had no young acquaintances to teach her foolishness, or tell her of her

mother's sin. She was allowed no money to fritter away on vanities, no

silly novels to read, such as those your friends write, no frivolous

pursuits which could distract her mind from duty--yet she is her mother

over again, and, like her mother, runs away from my house by stealth, in

the dead of night."

"It wasn't ten o'clock when I met her in the railway station," Somerled

defended the absent. "She was then not very stealthily seeking a train

for London, where she expected to find her mother. Mrs. West has written

you, I know, and told you everything that happened. For my part, I've

called to speak of a plan I have in mind for your granddaughter. The

telegram you sent Mrs. West seemed----"

"The telegram I sent Mrs. West? I've sent no telegram to her nor any

one. I don't send telegrams."

"Indeed?" stammered Somerled, taken aback. "I understood--Mrs. West

believed the telegram to be from you----"

"Nothing of the kind. She couldn't have believed it," Mrs. MacDonald

shut him up mercilessly. "She must have been 'romancing,' as I suppose

she would call it. I should call it lying."

Remembering Aline's words, Somerled also was frankly inclined to call it

lying--on the part of the young woman or the old. He would gladly have

blamed the elder, but reason rebelled. Whatever Mrs. MacDonald's faults

might be, she did not seem to be one who would deliberately tell a lie.

"But why should Mrs. West?" Somerled asked himself, calling up the

pretty smile, the soft blue eyes of his friend. He had been inclined to

believe her true. He had liked her very much, more than he liked most

women, and had wondered if he might not learn to like her still better

in time. The women he saw oftenest were mostly nervous, exacting,

self-centred creatures, craving constant flattery. Aline was none of

these things. She had many charms, and he had seen few defects; but a

motive for falseness in the matter of the telegram would suggest itself

to his intelligence. He tried to shut the door in its insinuating,

conceited grin.

"There must be a mistake--somewhere," he mumbled.

"Not here, anyhow," retorted the old lady.

"After all, it's apart from the question in hand. But perhaps my plans

for your granddaughter don't interest you?"

"Not particularly. Still, you may as well tell them. I see you want to."

"And I see"--Somerled squandered a smile, but only because it came

spontaneously--"I see that you want to hear them, because," he dared to

go on with a flash of his keen eyes into hers, "you _do_ care what

becomes of Miss MacDonald. If you had not got Mrs. West's letter, you

would have had no sleep last night. As it is, knowing your granddaughter

has fallen into safe hands, you can comfortably disclaim anxiety."

"You seem to fancy yourself a mind-reader, my good sir," returned Mrs.

MacDonald at her haughtiest, or what Barrie would have called her

"snortiest." "Think what you like. It is nothing to me, and thinking

costs naught. As for the hands she has fallen into, what do I know of

them? They may be black with sin for all I can tell. No doubt Barbara

Ballantree's daughter would be just as ready to accept help from such

hands."

"As a painter, I try to keep mine clean," said Somerled. "I tell you

that in earnest, not in joke, because for the present I've constituted

myself your granddaughter's guardian. My plan is to take her in my

motor-car to Edinburgh, where I shall deliver her safely to Mrs.

Bal--Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald. In the car will be Mrs. West and her

brother, Basil Norman. Have you anything to say against the plan? If you

have, kindly speak now."

"If I did speak, would it prevent your doing what you've made up your

mind to do?"

"Perhaps not, unless your reasons appealed to my judgment," Somerled

admitted.

"You're no prevaricator, anyhow."

"I don't come of prevaricating stock."

"You don't, if you're David MacDonald's son. He was a humble,

God-respecting man. But you have no humble air. You hold your crest

high."

Somerled was minded to be impudent and say that in that case he must get

his hair cut; but he refrained. "The atmosphere of this house does not

conduce to humility, madam," he answered instead--and always as they

talked the two looked one another straight and full in the face.

"H'm!" the old woman grunted. Yet there was something vaguely resembling

a twinkle in the glass-gray eyes, a gleam which Barrie and few others

now living had ever seen; for not more than one or two of her

fellow-beings had ever had the slightest idea how to manage Mrs.

MacDonald, _née_ Ann (scorning an "e") Hillard.

"Go on your motor trip, then, so far as I care," said she, a permission

which from her was well-nigh a blessing. "It will probably end in a

smash-up before Edinburgh."

"I think not," said Somerled. "I drive myself, and I know how to drive

rather well."

"I was not referring to physical results."

"So I presumed. Nor was I," he retorted.

If she found the reply enigmatical she did not say so.

They had not sat down during the conversation. Now, Somerled took a step

toward the door. "I'm obliged to you for receiving me, madam," he said

as a prelude to departure.

"I received you on the strength of your name," she reminded him.

"Which I don't intend to disgrace in your eyes."

"Why in my eyes? They will not long be looking your way."

"I think they will, as long as I'm in charge of your granddaughter.

That's what I mean."

"I do not thank you for the assurance. Except that when she's twenty-one

I shall make over certain money of my son's to her, I have washed my

hands of the girl."

"I haven't. That's not the kind of washing to make them clean."

"You reproach me, sir!" She glared at him.

"Not at all, madam. Even if I would venture, there's no need, for I

think your bark is worse than your bite."

Again she almost twinkled at the wretch's daring. There was excitement

in it, which she had not experienced since early married days. Then she

had had to do with another MacDonald, and even a Hillard could without

disgrace afford to be mastered by a MacDonald of Dhrum.

"When I've put your granddaughter into more suitable guardianship than

mine," Somerled went on quickly, "I'll write and tell you."

"Suitable guardianship! It will be some time before I get that letter."

"I thank you for the compliment."

"It was not one."

"You're not to blame if I choose to take it as such."

"I am not to blame in any way in this matter."

"There I'm no judge. It's my own actions I must look after." And again

he smiled.

"I advise you to be careful, sir, between Barbara Ballantree and

Barribel MacDonald. I wish you joy of them both."

"And what of Aline West?" The question whispered itself in Somerled's

ears.

But Mrs. MacDonald knew nothing of Aline West. And Somerled was

beginning to think that, for all the boasted sagacity of experience, he

knew not much more.

"Thank you for your kind wishes," he said non-committally. "And now I

will wish you a good day."

He put out his hand, and, to her own intense surprise when she thought

of it afterward, Mrs. MacDonald gave hers. Over the prominent knuckles

the old skin lay soft and loose. The grim woman was vaguely pathetic to

Somerled in his youth and strength and full tide of success. The touch

of the would-be iron hand in the velvet glove of faded age made him

conscious of his vast advantage over her. He went away filled with hope,

and a curious new joy of life, which was partly the excitement of

battle.

"The _heather moon_!" he found himself saying, as he passed out of the

ill-kept, once lovely garden where Barrie had often dreamed. Perhaps the

thought came then because here and there a patch of heather glorified

the weeds, or perhaps because Barrie's dreams still empurpled their

birthplace.

IX

When luncheon-time drew near and Somerled was absent, Aline's heart

misgave her. It was useless to argue that he must have lingered in talk

with his chauffeur, with whom he had early gone to confer. Reason

offered this explanation, which was plausible, and altogether more

likely than any other; but instinct was deaf to it. Aline wandered

nervously about the house and garden, unable to settle anywhere, and it

was an added vexation to her disturbed spirit that Basil should be

giving himself heart and soul to the entertainment of that dreadful girl

in the summer-house. It was well enough that he should entertain her,

and keep her passive, but Aline would have liked him to be a martyr,

sacrificing his own inclination for his sister's good. She did not wish

to think that there was something about this young, crude creature which

attracted men to her, and caused them to find pleasure in her society.

Aline's head ached, and she could not think consecutively. Again and

again she asked herself, "What shall I do if he has been to see that old

woman and found out about the telegram?" but no clear answer would come.

She could only repeat the would-be consoling words, "But he _hasn't_

been there. It's silly to think of such a thing. He's not that sort of

man."

She was in the summer-house with her brother and Barrie MacDonald when

at last Somerled did come. She called to him gayly as he appeared round

the corner of an immense architectural rose-bush, and he answered

pleasantly. He even met her smile with a smile as friendly to the eye,

and there was no definable change in his look or manner, yet--Aline was

filled with a cold fear which chilled the perfumed August noon. Her

perception of the invisible was as sensitive as the needle of a compass

to the thrill of the magnetic north. Her brain suddenly buzzed as if a

hive of bees had been let loose in her head. A voice seemed to be

yelling in her ears accusations: "What a fool you have been--what a fool

you have been. It's all your fault if he has found out. You needn't have

done the thing. It wasn't necessary."

She feared to meet Somerled's eyes and read condemnation, yet her very

dread forced her to seek them, and learn at once the best or worst,

since suspense was unbearable. It seemed to her that he avoided her

look; that he too was nervous and uncomfortable, while trying to appear

at ease.

For a moment or two he talked of the car, which he had been to see, and

of a sight-seeing expedition round Carlisle which Basil had proposed for

the afternoon. Then he turned suddenly to Barrie: "I've been thinking

over what we can do for you, Miss MacDonald," he said. "We don't know

where your mother is now, but we do know that she'll be in Edinburgh the

first of next week. Perhaps we might be able to find out her whereabouts

meanwhile, but there'd be delay before we could expect answers to

inquiries, if she's playing small towns in order to knock her new play

into shape. You don't want to go back to your grandmother's. We're

starting off in my car to-morrow. I've undertaken the responsibility of

you, so I'm your guardian _pro tem_. I couldn't allow you to hang about

alone anywhere. The alternative is, taking you with us in the car. What

do you say?"

"Me in a motor-car!" exclaimed Barrie, rapturous. "It can't be true."

"It will be true if you say 'yes.'" Somerled spoke coolly, but it seemed

to Aline that his eyes were alight. They were fixed on the girl, noting

how she paled and flushed. Her face, seen in the golden lights and green

shadows of the summer-house, had the texture of flowers. Aline had not

known it was in her to hate any one so bleakly as she hated Barrie

MacDonald at this moment; and she hated Somerled too, more than she had

hated him last night. She ached to make him suffer as he was making her

suffer. If only she could--if she but had the power!

This was the blow she had known would fall: the invitation to Barrie.

Now the worst had happened despite the risk she had run for its

prevention. And Somerled would not meet her eyes. Did this mean that he

not only made light of her arguments, but had found out the falsehood on

which they were based?

"Of course I say 'yes!'" Barrie was gayly answering. "It seems more than

ever as if I were in a fairy story. Travelling for five days, in a real,

live motor-car, to see my real live mother! Oh, if _Grandma_ knew!"

"She does know," said Somerled. The words spoke themselves. For once

unable to decide quickly and definitely, he had come back from Hillard

House to Moorhill Farm without making up his mind whether or no to tell

how he had spent most of his morning. He had left chance to settle the

question; and now it was settled. Still he did not look at Mrs. West. He

spoke in a commonplace tone, as if Mrs. MacDonald's knowledge of his

plan included no secret knowledge on his part.

"How do you know she knows?" asked Barrie eagerly, leaning toward him

with elbows on knees, chin in hand, long red plait failing over

shoulder. "You--you haven't _seen_ her?"

"I have."

"You met her looking for me!"

"No, not that."

"Then you must have been to Hillard House."

"Yes. I went there to talk with Mrs. MacDonald about you."

To save her life, Aline could not have kept down her agonizing blush.

Tears started to her eyes. Though she had been half prepared for this

blow, it fell upon her with an almost mortal shock. Ostentatiously,

Somerled was keeping his eyes off her face; and that was worse than if

he had stared straight into her eyes. Her terrible blush must have

touched the consciousness of a blind man. It called Basil's fascinated

attention from the girl; and so stricken did his sister look that he

would have cried out to ask what was the matter had she not sealed his

lips with a glance of desperate command.

There was no longer a gram of doubt. Somerled knew that Mrs. West had

lied about the telegram, and everything was changed between them

forever. For a moment Aline told herself that there was no hope, there

could not possibly be any; and yet, if he cared for her, would he not

forgive? Was there no way of saving the situation, and turning the

inevitable change into gain instead of loss? She took a quick and

courageous resolution, as a timid woman may when told that her life

depends upon a dangerous operation, to be performed instantly or not at

all.

"Mr. Somerled," she said, "can I speak to you--just you and me alone for

a few minutes?" As she made her plea, she rose from the rustic seat

where she had been sitting by her brother's side and opposite Barrie.

"Of course, with pleasure." Somerled rose too, stiff and alert as a

soldier on duty. She hated this stiffness, this alertness. It showed her

that he was sensitively dreading the scene to come, and hiding

reluctance behind a hard, bright shield.

"Mrs. West," Barrie spoke out impulsively, "if you don't want me to go

in the car, I won't."

"Of course I want you to go, silly child." Aline tried to withdraw

sharpness from her voice, but it was there, like the sting of a wasp in

a wound. "Even if I didn't think it wise for some reasons, it isn't my

car, you know, but Mr. Somerled's, and he has a perfect right to invite

any guests he likes. Don't imagine that I'm going to talk to him about

_you_. It's something quite different I have to say."

Barrie was snubbed into instant silence; but as Aline and Somerled

walked away together they heard her appeal confidentially to Basil, in a

tone of passionate interest: "What _shall I_ do about clothes? I can't

go off in a motor-car with----" The rest was lost in distance.

The two walked without speaking as far as the big, spouting rose-bush

and the junction where two paths met. Then, choosing the path which

avoided the house, Aline took her life in her hands.

"You mentioned that telegram to Mrs. MacDonald?"

"Yes," confessed Somerled. "The subject came up--accidentally."

"What did she say? I want you to tell me. Afterward I'll explain--why."

"She said that she hadn't sent any telegram; and I saw at once that you

must have made a mistake."

"You needn't put it that way to save my feelings!" Aline caught him up,

panting a little, not trying to calm herself. "You knew that I had--told

you a fib. Be honest with me. You must. And I'll be honest with you."

"I'm glad you're talking to me like this," said Somerled simply,

"because I was puzzled, I admit. I couldn't bear to think----"

"I know exactly what you couldn't bear to think," she cut in, letting

herself break into a sob. "You thought: 'Mrs. West has told me a

deliberate lie because she's jealous of that child, and doesn't want me

to take her in the car.' Oh, don't deny it. I _know_. And it's true. I

_was_ jealous, I don't dislike the poor little thing. Why should I?

She's too insignificant, too much a child in intellect as well as years.

But--I wanted you to ourselves. It was horrid of me. Only you can't

imagine how I've looked forward to this trip, ever since the day you

asked us to take it with you. Before that I was bored with the idea of

writing the book we've promised our publishers. Our going with you made

all the difference to me. You see, we got to be such friends on

shipboard--that last night. I _am_ a jealous friend. I admit it. And it

was such a blow to have a stranger thrust upon us--to have _you_ thrust

her upon us--when you might have guessed how I felt, if we're friends.

The telegram this morning was from Sir George. It told me that Mrs. Bal

was coming to Edinburgh. Instantly I _knew_ you'd ask that girl to go

with us there in the car--oh, simply in your kindness of heart to a

waif. But I couldn't bear it. I saw everything spoiled--for us all, even

you. I was like a disappointed child. I had to do _something_--and on

the impulse I made up that fib. I'm not sorry even now--I think. Yet I

did mean to tell you, sooner or later, the truth. Honestly, I shouldn't

have kept silence long if you hadn't found out. I'm not a coward when

it's necessary to be brave."

"I see you're not," said Ian. "You--have paid me a great compliment, and

I thank you."

"You thank me for what--precisely? For telling a fib because I wanted to

keep my friend to myself--if I could?"

"For liking me well to enough tell it."

"For liking you well enough! Yet now I've shown my liking--and my

courage, you like me less."

"No."

"You do!"

"No."

"Prove that."

"How do you want me to prove it?"

Aline's voice was thick. She felt broken, but not beaten yet. "Prove

it," she almost whispered, "by sacrificing that girl to--_our_

friendship. When we go back to the summer-house, tell her you've changed

your mind; that you'll find out at what place her mother is playing now;

and that after all you think it best to send her there at once. You

_could_ find out easily, you know! And I'd take the child myself if you

liked. I'd do that for you, if you'd do what I ask for me."

"You're only trying me, Mrs. West," said Somerled. "You don't really

wish me to fail the girl."

"Fail her! What an exaggeration. She _wants_ to go to her mother."

"At present she wants to go to her mother by motor-car."

Anger at his obstinacy and her own failure lost Aline her self-control.

"You mean you want the girl in your motor-car!" Her manner made the

words an accusation. But he took the challenge in silence, walking at

her side, his head slightly bent, his hands in his pockets. Aline darted

a glance at his profile. His jaw looked set, and he had the expression

of a man who would give anything to be smoking a cigarette.

It was too late to grope her way back to the path of tactfulness, and

the hot blood in her temples made her indifferent to his opinion, to the

future, to everything except her own anger and the need to vent it.

"Silence gives consent," she said bitterly, seeing her hopes lie broken

at her feet, but not caring much yet. Only, she knew dully that she

would care by and by, care to the sharpest point of agony. "Well, so

much for our friendship! I'm sorry. I would have done a good deal for my

part of it, but there's a limit, isn't there? And friendship can't be

all on one side. I'm afraid, if you want Miss MacDonald in your car,

you'll have to get her another chaperon. I don't engage in that

capacity."

Now there was just one last loophole open for Somerled. He could protest

that Aline had misunderstood him; that he cared not a hang or anything

of that kind whether Miss Barrie MacDonald went to Edinburgh or Jericho;

that the only thing which mattered was Mrs. West's friendship. If he

said this quickly, she would hold out both hands to him and cry a

little, and beg his pardon for being cross. Then they would forgive each

other and everything would be as before, or better. But Aline waited

breathlessly for an instant, and several more instants: and Somerled

said nothing at all. He would have continued to walk slowly on if she

had not stopped suddenly in the middle of the path, and brought him up

short. Already she was beginning to feel the pain of loss and the

weighty irrevocability of everything. "What are we going to do?" she

panted, her breast rising and falling alluringly. Her cheeks were bright

pink, and her eyes brilliant. Never had she been so near to beauty; but

Somerled faced her with a calm very like sullenness.

"What are _you_ going to do?" he answered her with a question.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you and Norman to go motoring with me through Scotland, of

course."

"Thank you. But I've made my point, and I must stick to it. Basil and I

won't go with you if this girl goes."

"We've quarrelled, then, have we?" he asked. His eyes were blue as the

ice of glaciers in his brown face. His mouth and chin looked hard as

iron; and never had Aline liked him half as well.

"Yes, we've quarrelled--if you insist," she said.

"Then I must no longer intrude on you as your guest."

"You'll go----"

"Naturally I'll go. I can't stay in your house--it's the same as your

house--when you think I no longer deserve your friendship. On my side, I

think you're unreasonable; but I may be wrong. Perhaps it's I who am

unreasonable, and can't see it. Anyhow, I shall have to go."

"I won't have Miss MacDonald in the house a minute after you leave,"

Aline said, almost threateningly.

"Why should you? Her packing won't take long, poor child."

"You'll have to send her back to her grandmother now," Aline warned him,

in a brief flame of defiance.

"That's impossible. I wouldn't break my promise, even if Mrs. MacDonald

didn't forbid her the house."

"She can't very well go alone with you to Edinburgh in your car, I

suppose?"

"She is going to Edinburgh in my car, but not alone with me. Won't you

go too, Mrs. West, and let us forget all this nonsense?"

"You call it nonsense? That shows how little you understand me, how

willing you are to spoil everything for the sake of this wretched girl!

Basil and I will simply go back to our original plan, and travel through

Scotland together in a hired car."

"Luncheon is served, madam," Moore announced, at the turn of the path.

Luncheon--and the world in ruin!

"Mr. Somerled and Miss MacDonald will not be lunching," said Aline

icily.

Moore hid surprise by retiring in decorous haste.

"Good-bye, Mrs. West," said Somerled.

He held out his hand, looking at her steadily, but she turned and rushed

away from him, crying.