The Heather-Moon Part 11

"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 pa.s.sionate 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."