The Heather-Moon Part 25

At this Sir S. glanced our way for an instant, looked as if he wanted to speak, changed his mind, and turned again to Mrs. West, next whom he sat, with Mrs. James on his other side. No wonder, I thought, he liked better to look at her than me, as she was so fresh and elaborate and charming. All through dinner he talked to Mrs. West and a little to Mrs. James, leaving Basil to entertain me, which he did very kindly. Still, Sir S. seemed annoyed because a party of young American men at a table near ours stared at me a good deal, though he didn't care to pay me any attention himself. He drew his eyebrows together and glared at them once, whereupon the nicest looking of the four (and they were all good-looking) bowed. Sir S.

returned the nod stiffly, with an "I-wonder-if-I-really-_do_ know-you,-or-if-this-is-a-trick-to-claim-acquaintance?" sort of expression.

Perhaps I ought to have been annoyed too, but I wasn't a bit. They were _such_ nice boys, so young, and having such a glorious time! I was glad they looked at me and not at Mrs. West, and I was sure they didn't mean to be rude. Probably they'd seen mother, or her photographs, and were puzzling over the resemblance which Sir S. and Basil both say is very strong, in spite of "marked differences." Whenever we speak of her, I feel as if I could hardly wait till Monday, though at other times the present seems so enchanting I can't bear to have it turn into the past.

The American boys (I thought that none of them could be over twenty-one) lingered at their table a long time after they seemed to have finished their dinner. They played some kind of game with bent matches which made them laugh a good deal; but the minute we got up, I heard them push back their chairs, though I didn't turn my head.

Basil and I walked out of the dining-room after the rest of the party, and the boys came close behind us. I heard one say in a low voice, "Did you ever see such hair?" and I felt a sort of creep run all the way down my plait and up again into my brain, because I've been brought up to think red hair ugly, and it's hard to believe every one isn't making fun of it. However, I remembered what Sir S. said about the flame-coloured heads of the children in the road, and that stuff Basil wrote in his notebook about Circe. Then I felt better, and hoped that the boys were not laughing.

Outside the dining-room door the handsomest one got near enough to speak to Sir S. "How do you do, Mr. Somerled?" he said. "Don't you remember me? I'm Jack Morrison, Marguerite's cousin. I met you twice at Newport while you were painting her portrait."

"Marguerite Morrison. 'M. M.,' the grateful model who gave him the refrigerator basket!" thought I. And Sir S. proceeded to give the cousin a refrigerator glance; but it didn't discourage him. He went on as cordially as ever. "My three chums want to be presented: d.i.c.k Farquhar, Charlie Grant, Sam Menzies. We're all Harvard men, seeing Europe in general and Scotland in particular, in our vacation. We've every one of us got Scottish blood in our veins, so we sort of feel we've earned the right to make your acquaintance. And we've been wondering if you'd introduce us to your friends, if you don't think it's cheek of us to ask!"

Sir S. looked as if he did think it great "cheek"; but if he hesitated, Mrs. West quickly decided for him. She gave the nice American boy one of her sweet, soft smiles, and said, "Of course Mr. Somerled will introduce you all to us; or you may consider yourselves introduced, and save him the trouble. My name is Aline West, and this is my brother, Basil Norman."

She went through this little ceremony in a charming way, yet as if she expected the young men to be delighted; and I too thought they would burst into exclamations of joy at meeting celebrities. But not a word did any of the four say about the books, or their great luck in meeting the authors. Perhaps they were too shy, though they didn't seem shy in other ways. They just mumbled in a kind of chorus. "Very pleased to know you both" (which Mr. Norman told me afterward is an American formula, on being introduced); and when they'd bowed to the brother and sister and Mrs. James (though she hadn't been mentioned) all four grouped round me.

This was natural, I suppose, because we were more or less of an age.

"Is this your daughter, Mrs. West?" asked Jack Morrison. "And may we children talk to her?"

For a minute that pretty, sweet-faced woman looked exactly like a cat.

She did, really. It almost gave me a shock! I thought, "She must have _been_ a cat in another state of existence, and hasn't quite got over it." Not that cats aren't nice in their way; but when ladies in fascinating frocks, with hair beautifully dressed, suddenly develop a striking family likeness to Persian p.u.s.s.ies robbed of milk, it does have a quaint effect on the nerves.

"Miss MacDonald is _not_ my daughter," said Mrs. West, laughing wildly.

"I'm not _quite_ old enough yet to have a daughter of her age, and she's not such a child as she looks. But _do_ talk to her, by all means. I'm sure she'll be very pleased."

"Then your name _is_ MacDonald?" Jack Morrison exclaimed. "We were saying at dinner how much you look like Mrs. Bal MacDonald, the beautiful actress. Is she any relation?"

"Yes, she is," I answered. And I would have gone on to tell him and his friends that she was my mother, but I saw Sir S. and Mrs. West and Basil looking as if they wanted to get away, so I dared not go into particulars.

"Do tell us about it," said all the American boys together, when I paused to take breath and think. I should have loved to stop and talk about mother, but magnetic thrills of disapproval from my guardians crackled through me. "If you're in Edinburgh next week maybe you'll find out," I said consolingly. "But now I must go."

I bowed nicely, and they bowed still more nicely, trying to look wistful, as if they didn't want me to hurry away.

We went to a private sitting-room Sir S. had taken, so I suppose he had invited Basil and Mrs. West; and I thought they would speak of the American boys, but n.o.body even referred to their existence. This made me feel somehow as if I were being snubbed. I don't know why, for n.o.body was unkind.

Afterward, when Mrs. James and I went to our adjoining bedrooms, I asked her if I had done anything I ought not to have done.

"No, my dear child," said she, smoothing my hair, which I'd begun to unplait. "Nothing except----" and she hesitated.

"Except what? Tell me the worst."

"There isn't any worst. You did nothing that Mrs. West and I wouldn't like to do, if we could. I won't go into particulars, if you don't mind, because it wouldn't be good for you if I did, and might make you self-conscious--a great misfortune that would spoil what some of us like best in you. But you needn't worry."

"Mrs. West looked as if she longed to scratch my eyes out. She needn't have been so _very_ vexed at my being taken for her daughter. I'm not a scarecrow, or a village idiot."

Mrs. James laughed, a well-trained little laugh she has, which seems taught to go on so far and no farther--like the tune I once heard a bullfinch sing in a shop.

"My dear, you're too young and unworldly to understand these things,"

she said. "A pretty woman, a celebrity like Mrs. West, isn't pleased when she expects all the attention of young gentlemen for herself, to find that she goes for nothing, and all they want is to talk to some one else. And then, at her age, to be taken for a grown-up girl's mother! I couldn't help being sorry for her myself. I know what it is to want to keep young."

"But you're thinking of Doctor James," said I. "And she's a _widow_.

Besides, she's always calling me a child, and telling me to play dolls."

"Well, that isn't to say that she wants all the men there are to play dolls with you," chuckled Mrs. James.

"These were boys, compared to her. She must be _thirty_."

"Maybe she's more, if the truth were known. But why should it be known?

Even when we're thirty and--er--a little over--we like to be admired by boys as well as others. It makes us feel we haven't got _beyond_ things.

Still, she needn't grudge you those lads. She's got the great Somerled."

"Yes, I suppose she has," I admitted grudgingly.

I went to bed feeling as if elephants had walked over me for years.

Next morning Sir S. seemed to take it for granted that Basil would look after Mrs. James and me. He certainly put on rather a "kind uncle" air with me, but the more he did so, the less and less I felt as if he were my uncle, and the more and more I wanted to have him for my knight--mine all alone, without so much as a link of his chain armour for any one else.

It is strange, as I've thought often before already, how one can get to feel in such a way about a person one has known only a few days. But you see, _I've known Sir S. in a motor-car_. I do believe that makes a difference. Motor-cars vibrate, and you vibrate in them faster than you do when not in motor-cars; so your feelings travel much faster than they would in any other way. _That_ must be the scientific explanation of what I feel for Sir S.

Here we were in Ayr, whither we'd come to think about Burns and n.o.body else (unless, perhaps, Wallace) and this was to be the beginning of a special little tour, following all along the line of Burns's pathway in life, from his birth in the town of Ayr, to his death in the town of Dumfries. We'd hurried through Dumfries almost with our eyes shut, on purpose not to see where he died, before he was born, so to speak; and I had thought all this inspiration on the part of Sir S. I fancied that he had planned it partly for my sake, because of my being just out of the gla.s.s retort. But now he abandoned me to another; and seeing him entirely absorbed in Mrs. West kept me from dwelling on Burns as much as I ought. If you are to concentrate your mind on historical characters or poets, you must clear your brain out to make room for them, whereas mine was stuffed full of fancies about myself and other people, none of whom are historical at all yet--except, perhaps, the great Somerled.

Neither could Basil think exclusively of Burns, as we walked together through the pleasant town of Ayr, after our early breakfast. He was absent-minded once or twice, and when I said, "A penny for your thoughts!" he answered that they were of the book he would like to write but couldn't.

"The men I want to write about are boiling with primitive pa.s.sions,"

said he, laughing, "and that won't do for a 'motor-novel.' Not that people who travel in motor-cars aren't mostly boiling with primitive pa.s.sions for one cause or another, every minute. But the critics won't have it. According to them, characters can experience grand emotions only when they are keeping still, not when they're being hurled about the country. The proper place for primitive emotions is in small fishing villages, or, better still, on Devonshire moors, or, best of all, in the illimitable desert. So you see the men I have in my mind wouldn't go down with the critics, because unfortunately they happen to be in a motor-car."

Talking of men in motor-cars, at that moment an enormous red car, going very fast, changed its mind suddenly, stopped short in twice its own length, and out jumped four men. They were the Americans of last night, and by this time I had mixed up their names (except Jack Morrison's, because he was so good-looking, with square blue eyes), but they labelled themselves over again very neatly for me. The freckled one was d.i.c.k Farquhar; the one with a moustache like the shadow of a coming event, Charlie Grant; the one with the scar on his forehead, Sam Menzies; but they had funny nicknames for each other. Afterward Basil said they made him feel as if his name ought to be Methuselah.

The boys had been going to Burns's birthplace in their motor-car, but they asked if they might walk round the town with us, and take to their auto later. I looked appealingly at Basil, for they were such fun, so he said, "Yes, of course"; and they were very polite, and called him "sir,"

as they had Mr. Somerled the night before. But each time they used the word, Basil looked as if he were swallowing bad medicine, and yet as though he were inclined to laugh. Presently, however, he went ahead with Mrs. James, following his sister and Sir S., and left me to the four boys. We laughed at everything. I'm afraid it wasn't at all the spirit to go hero-worshipping; and none of them knew anything about "The Twa Brigs" of Burns's poem. I should have liked to call Basil and ask him, but they said they should feel it would be money in their pockets never to have been born if I "shunted" them like that, so we laughed a great deal more and went on wallowing in ignorance. They seemed to take it for granted that I would rather be with them than with the others, and they paid me all sorts of funny compliments. They vowed that they had resolved to change their whole trip because of me, and wherever I was going they would go too; so, just for fun, I would tell them nothing except that it was to be Edinburgh on Monday. Cross-question as they might, I would say no more than that they must find out my hotel, and how I was related to "Mrs. Bal" (as they all called her) for themselves, if they were to find out at all.

They knew little more about Wallace than Burns. When we stopped in front of the monument in the High Street, coming back from the Auld Brig, Jack Morrison began grandly with "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," but he could get no farther, and stopped to ask helplessly, "Where _did_ he bleed, anyhow? Was it here, and if not, why did they put up the monument?"

Even I knew that Wallace was born in Ayr; and when I impudently inquired what they came to Europe to see, if they cared more about football than history, they all answered that they came to see pretty girls. "And, by Jove, we're doing it!" added Charlie Grant.

"Can't you find pretty girls at home?" I sneered.

"We have found 'em. We're looking for new types now," said Jack. "So's the great Somerled, isn't he? He told my Cousin Marguerite that he was going a long journey in search of a model with the right shade of hair, which was hard on her, poor girl, as she's spent a pot o' money on hers.

But Somerled's a sardonic sort of chap, don't you think? They say his money's spoilt him. He hardly ever paints nowadays. Too busy grubbing for millions. I've heard that you have to go on your knees to get him to do a portrait--and if he graciously consents, you can't tell but he'll bring out all that's most evil in your soul on to your face, like a rash. You never know what'll happen with him--except his fee. Nothing less than ten thousand dollars, if you get off cheap."

"I don't think he's that kind of a man at _all_," said I, "Why, just to prove to you that he isn't, he's offered to paint me for nothing!"

They all roared at this, and wouldn't explain why. I didn't like them much, for five minutes; but after that I couldn't help forgiving them again.

We took the Gray Dragon for Alloway and for Burns's birthplace, but the boys jumped into their car and kept close behind us. Hardly had we got into the tiny thatched house--once a mere "clay biggin"--where Burns was born, than the four appeared on the scene. Mrs. West was scarcely civil to them at first, until Basil whispered (only in fun, of course, but she took it seriously, as she often does when people think they're being humorous), "If you're nasty to those boys, it will be a bad advertis.e.m.e.nt. They won't read your books or tell their friends they're the best books going!" She was quite kind and elderly-sisterly to them after that. But nice boys as they are, it did grate on me having them make jokes every minute, even about that wonderful, pathetic little room with the railed-off furniture and curtained wall-bed.