The Heather-Moon Part 18

"Why? What do you know of Carlyle?"

"Not much," I had to confess, "But there were three books of his my father had, which I've read. And there's a picture of him still in the library."

"Which books? What picture?"

"'The French Revolution,' and 'Hero Worship,' and 'Sartor Resartus,' It was that last one I read first. I took it off the shelf because it had such a queer name. I wanted to find out what it meant. Don't you always desperately want to find out what everything means? I do. But I suppose you know everything by now. Well, I began to read without being so very much interested. Then, suddenly, my mind seemed to wake up. It was a wonderful feeling, just as if I stood near to a man who was playing marvellous and startling music on the grandest organ ever made. And the man who played could sing too. He sang in a voice sometimes harsh and sometimes sweet. It seemed to me as I read the book that it was humorous and sad, tender and stern at the same time. And till the very end I was carried along on the wave of that organ music, which had in it always a thrill of the divine. I never found any other book in the library that made me feel exactly like that, except Shakespeare--and Grandma had all the Shakespeare volumes carted off to the garret after she came in one day when I was eleven, and found me reading 'Macbeth.' As for the picture of Carlyle, it shows him, sitting in a chair, with a look on his face of a sad man alone in a gray world."

"Whistler's portrait! You shall have all Carlyle's works and Shakespeare's for your own. I'll give them to you," said Sir Somerled, looking at me with an interested look, as if suddenly he liked me better than he had before.

"Oh, you _are_ good, and I should love to have them," I said. "But now there'll be my mother I shall have to ask permission of for everything.

I must do just what she wants me to do, for I shall die if she doesn't love me."

"Yes. I'd forgotten," said he.

"I hadn't, for a minute," I answered. "But I suppose, as mother is a great actress, she loves Shakespeare and has all his works; and perhaps she has Carlyle, too, in her library."

"Perhaps," he echoed.

"Don't you like her?" I asked. "You always look odd, and speak in a short, snappy way when I talk of my mother."

"I like and admire her immensely," he answered, in that remote tone which tries to frighten me, and does almost--but not quite. "All the same, I don't think you'll find Carlyle in her library, so you'll have to let me give him to you. But meanwhile, you shall learn to understand him better by seeing the little village where he was born, and the house his father the stonemason built."

So we started off in the car, going back to the highway and along a road which perhaps would not have seemed extraordinary if it hadn't been made surpa.s.singly beautiful by men who lit the path of history with a shining light. I had a gay, irresponsible feeling, sitting beside Sir S. on the springy front seat of the luxurious motor-car, as if I were a neat little parcel clearly addressed to my destination, and going there safely by registered post. By this time even Mrs. James had ceased to "bite her heart" when she saw another motor dashing toward us, or a man sauntering across the road and filling the whole horizon. The car is so singularly intelligent that you feel it is a friend, too kind-hearted and chivalrous a creature to let anything bad happen. Of course, about every ten minutes something _almost_ happens, but that is invariably the fault of other people's cars. You dash up to the mouth of a cross-road which you couldn't possibly have seen, because it is subtly disguised as a clump of trees or a flowery knoll; and you discover its true ident.i.ty only because another motor--a blundering brute of a motor--bursts out at fifty miles an hour in front of your nose. If you'd reached that point an instant later, your own virtuous automobile and the wretch that isn't yours would certainly have telescoped, and you'd have been sitting in the nearest tree with your head in your lap. But already I begin to notice that you may pretty well count on reaching the danger point (produced by alien autos) at precisely the right instant, never the wrong one, and this gives you a beautiful confidence in your luck and your driver: although the real secret must lie in the acuteness of your guardian angel or patron saint. Vedder, who when young was a champion boxer, is very superst.i.tious, and Mr. Somerled allows him a large gold medal of St. Christopher on the dashboard. St. Christopher, it seems, has undertaken the spiritual care of motor-cars, and as by this time he has millions under his guidance, his plans for keeping them out of each other's way must be as complicated as the traffic arrangements of a railway superintendent. When I contrasted the angelic behaviour of our car with the appalling perversity of other people's, Sir S. burst out laughing, and said that evidently I was born with the motor instinct: that he'd seen women who took days or weeks learning these great truths, whereas I came by them naturally. "It's remarkable what a lot of valuable knowledge can be picked up by an enterprising princess in a gla.s.s retort, when the dragon isn't looking!" said he.

"Princesses in gla.s.s retorts are perhaps forced to learn lessons tabooed by dragons," I replied to this; "so if I know things or have thought things that every other girl doesn't think or know, it's because they were forbidden fruit. They were my only fun."

"They've made you a splendid little 'pal,' if you know what that means,"

said he. "I'm not sure the gla.s.s-retort system hasn't some advantages for the bringing up of women. The proverb is that truth lies at the bottom of a well. I begin to think it may be looked for in gla.s.s retorts in the land of dragons."

"You mean that I'm truthful?" I asked.

"Yes. I'm inclined to believe, up to date, that you've remained as transparent as the gla.s.s of your late prison."

"What makes you think so?" I wanted to know.

"Observation--partly. And the way you talk to me."

"What way?"

"Well--that's a knotty question. I can hardly explain, but----"

"I wonder," I began to think out aloud, "whether you mean that I say what comes into my mind without being afraid you mayn't like it?"

"Er--um--perhaps that covers a good deal of the ground. But what put the idea into your head? Why should you be afraid of me?"

"I'm not. Only--I've thought that it would be more respectful if I were.

You are so celebrated, you see. That's the first thing I heard about you--I mean, about your being such a famous artist. I heard you were rich too, but of course that didn't interest me so much."

"No? That proves the benefit of the gla.s.s-retort system."

"Why--how, please?"

"Because princesses who haven't been bottled up in them, but have lived in the lap of luxury--and in the laps of luxurious mothers--understand the value of money, and consider men famed for their millions worth a dozen who've wrapped themselves up in a few rags of some lesser kind of fame."

"You call being a great artist a lesser kind of fame?"

"I didn't once. But since I've got into the money-making habit, I've accepted the world's opinion."

"Pooh!" said I rudely. "I don't believe you have, because the first minute I saw you, I felt sure you were a _real_ man. That's why I just had to speak to you in the station, instead of one of the others. I knew--by instinct, I suppose, as you say I know about motors. Think of the glory of being able to _create_ beautiful things!"

"Think of being able to buy them! Jewels and castles and yachts, and all sorts of things that women love. Motor-cars for instance."

"You could buy motor-cars with money you earned by painting pictures, couldn't you?"

"Yes; but not castles or yachts: and not enough jewels to please princesses who haven't spent eighteen years in a gla.s.s retort."

"Well," I said, "I may be no judge, but I think jewels and castles would be a bother, and I should be seasick in yachts. Give me a man who brings beautiful things out of his soul, not out of his pockets. You're very nice now; but you must have been much nicer before you buried your talents under the shields and bracelets you told me about. Even I know what you mean by them--and what happened to Tarpeia."

"_Even_ you! I begin to think you were born knowing about a good many things besides motor-cars. And you are entirely right. I was much nicer before I began to collect the shields and bracelets."

"Can't you give a lot of them away, and do what I said--go back to the time before you bargained for them?"

"You don't understand how difficult it is to go back."

"But you are back--in Scotland."

"You're right. Now's my one chance to return to my youth and ideals.

Bright little Princess, thank you for polishing up the dulled surface of my soul."

"It's only the surface that needs polishing," said I. "The inside part is shining, even when the outside looks dim. But I'm afraid you're making fun of me?"

"I was never more in earnest. I'm crossing more than one border with you to-day."

"Borders you like crossing?"

"Great heavens, yes!"

"I'm glad of that," said I, in a self-satisfied way, "for then you won't miss Mrs. West so much."

"Miss Mrs. West? Good Lord, I'd forgotten her!"

"That's very ungrateful and horrid of you, then," I scolded him, "because you and she were friends, and she knows how to be perfectly charming."

"Yes. She knows how."

"She knows just what to do and say."

"Yes. She's an agreeable--and experienced--woman."