The Heather-Moon Part 32

"There is some one," Mrs. Bal went on, with a slight but lessening constraint, "who--rather likes me, and I rather like him--better than I can remember liking anybody. He's got lots of money. His name is Morgan Bennett. Somerled--you know him."

"Yes," said Somerled. "I thought his back looked familiar."

So the big fellow who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P.

Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P.

Bennett has made twenty millions out of tin--and unlimited cheek. He is so big that his pet name in Wall Street used to be "The Little Tin Soldier."

"He has been--dangling lately," Mrs. Bal went on. "Oh, nothing settled!

I confess I wish it were. I mean to take him if he asks me, and I think he will. You wouldn't believe it, but he's a shy man with women. I do believe he's frightened to propose. He's bought a house in London, in my favourite square. And now he's taken a shooting-lodge in Forfarshire--such an amusing place: a huge round house with as many eyes as in a peac.o.c.k's tail, all staring cheerfully, and high chimneys grouped together like bundles of asparagus. I've just been staying there with his sister, Mrs. Payne, whom I believe he imported from America on purpose to play gooseberry. You know--or perhaps you don't--I tried my new play for the first time in Dundee, just one night, and it went gorgeously. This house of his isn't far off, and I was motored back and forth for rehearsals and so on, while the company stayed in town. I simply fell in love with the place; and he's trying to buy it--to please me, I _hope_. There's a round porter's lodge and a round garage: and the round house stands on a round lawn with a round road running round it like a belt, so that it all seems the centre of a round world with the sun moving round it. He brought me from there to Edinburgh to-day, and two of my maids in another car. He won't stop here in the same hotel with me, of course, but he'll drop in now and then--naturally--and he's taken his box at the theatre for the whole week. We must arrange this sister business before he calls. I've confessed to him that I'm twenty-nine, and it's perfectly true. I've been twenty-nine for several years. But he'd hardly believe me so old. And what _should_ I do--I ask you all--if a grown-up--oh, but an extremely grown-up--daughter suddenly loomed over my horizon? Even if I put back her clock to fifteen instead of--never mind!--I couldn't manage to be less than thirty-one, and that with the greatest difficulty. Now you see how I am placed."

"Shall I go away and--and save you all the bother?" asked Barrie, in a very small voice.

"Oh, no, no, dear child; nothing of the sort, of course," protested Mrs.

Bal, patting the hands which Barrie held tightly clasped together in her lap. "You mustn't be naughty and misunderstand. I don't want to lose you like that, now you've taken all the trouble to find me--with the help of our good Somerled. But--will you be a sister to me?--as popular men have to say in Leap Year."

"I'll do whatever you want me to do," Barrie answered in the same little voice, like that of a chidden child. "Am I--would you like me to stay with you here, or----"

"Why, I suppose"--Mrs. Bal showed that she was startled--"I suppose we must fix up a place for you--for a few days. But I don't see how you can go with me on tour. It wouldn't be good for you at all. The best way is for us to have a nice little visit together, and get acquainted with each other, and then perhaps I'd better send you to--er--to my flat in London, or--to boarding-school, or somewhere. I _quite_ understand you wouldn't go back to your grandmother at any price, would you?"

"I'd rather do that than be a trouble to you," said Barrie. "Only, I don't think she'd take me back. But I could try----"

"Certainly Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald won't hear of your going back to live in Carlisle, I'm sure," said Somerled, looking somehow formidable to reckon with as his eyes met Mrs. Bal's. Then, to the girl's mother: "I am connected with her father's family in a way, you know, and I took advantage of the connection to make Mrs. MacDonald's acquaintance at Hillard House, after I'd met--her granddaughter. The arrangement between us was that I should play guardian _pro tem_. So if you want any advice about--Miss MacDonald's future, perhaps you'll be good enough to let me help you."

"Thanks, oh, thanks! I accept gratefully," replied Mrs. Bal, who had no doubt already heard downstairs some few words explaining Barrie's presence with our party in Scotland. "And you'll tell everybody she's my sister, won't you?"

"I'll not say anything to the contrary," he promised grimly.

"And you, Mr. Norman? You, dear Mrs. James?"

"I'll protect the secret with my life," said I, laughing. If I were a woman, I should have been hysterical by this time.

"I'll keep my mouth shut," replied Mrs. James, with pitying eyes that said to the girl, "If _I_ were your mother, dear child, young as I like to look, I'd be _proud_ to own you!"

"What about your American victims?" I inquired of Barrie.

Mrs. Bal p.r.i.c.ked up her ears. "What victims?" she asked before her daughter had time to speak.

"Four young men who have prostrated themselves under Miss MacDonald's chariot," I explained. "All who see her do this." In adding the little tribute I meant well; but I saw in an instant that I'd been tactless.

Mrs. Bal regarded the girl reflectively; and that uncomfortable faculty I have for reading people's thoughts told me she was repeating to herself, "Ah, so all the men who see this child fall in love with her, do they? H'm!"

"They--I never talked to them about--about having a--mother," Barrie stammered.

"And this Mr. Douglas?" Mrs. Bal asked. "Is he too a 'victim?'"

"He appears to be something of the sort," I was obliged to answer, as she appealed to me. "The Douglas Heart, you know! And he has a cousin with whom he's staying----"

"Oh, do, dear Mr. Norman, like an angel of mercy 'square' them for me, will you, and all the others who know?" Mrs. Bal implored, ostentatiously ignoring Somerled, who had too evidently gone over to the younger generation. "Your sister, too--and her friends? Will you go and see if they have come, and if they have, bring them here--or plead my cause eloquently, or something?"

"I'll go at once," I agreed, rising. On principle, I disliked and despised the gorgeous, selfish creature; but there was that in me which longed to please her, and delighted in being chosen as her defender, over the head of Somerled, so to speak. I was not sorry to escape from the scene which Barrie's pale face and o'er-bright eyes made very trying; also I was really anxious to find out if Aline had come. If she had not, I should begin to worry about her and the poor old car--to say nothing of the tribe of Vanneck.

As I went out, I heard Mrs. Bal exclaim, "Oh, by the way, if she's to be my sister, she can't be a MacDonald, She'll have to take the name of Ballantree. It was my maiden name, you know."

A disagreeable surprise awaited me outside. I learned that, while we'd been out after luncheon, my sister and the Vannecks had come, but that Aline had had a mishap. She'd been wearing a motor-mask veil, according to her custom, in order to protect her complexion. The talc front over her face had been damaged in the morning's storm, and somehow her eyes were injured. I should have received the news sooner had I gone to the desk instead of following Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald upstairs.

Off I hurried to Aline's room, where I found Mrs. Vanneck with my sister, and an oculist whom George had hurried out to fetch. The poor girl was suffering, and a good deal frightened, though we tried to console her. As she went to the window to be examined by the specialist, I could see that her face and hair and lilac silk blouse were covered with a powder of talc, which sparkled like diamond dust. Her eyes and lids were full of the stuff, it proved, and she cried with nervousness and pain as the oculist proceeded to get it all out.

It was impossible to speak to her of Barrie and Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald, but I told Maud Vanneck, who, though mildly horrified, promised for herself and her brothers that the secret should not be revealed.

When I returned to Mrs. Bal's sitting-room, I found Somerled and Mrs.

James gone. Barrie was alone with her newly found--sister, and a more forlorn little figure than our young G.o.ddess it would be hard to imagine. Andromeda chained to her rock could not have looked more dismally deserted by her friends. A room had been taken for her, and she was now transformed into Miss Barribel Ballantree. "What a good thing I wouldn't let her be called Barbara after me," said Mrs. Bal. "We should have had to change her whole name, and that would have been _really_ awkward!"

I should have retired at once, when my errand was done, but Mrs. Bal would not let me go. I think, for one thing, she wasn't at ease with Barrie alone; and for another, she wanted to see if I too were a victim of this young person who might perhaps turn out a formidable rival as well as an inconvenient daughter. Barrie evidently wished me to stay; and I made no effort to conceal my real feeling for the girl from either of them. I thought that now was the time to let myself go. Barrie was inwardly yearning for comfort and love, and I opened the door of my heart for her to see that it and all within were hers. I was on the spot, and Somerled wasn't; so I hoped that Barrie might be thankful even for her "brother of the pen." Mrs. Bal's bright, observant eyes saw and understood.

Presently she announced that she was rather tired, and would lie down, as there would be rehearsing to-morrow in the theatre; and though she'd opened in Dundee, she would be almost as nervous in Edinburgh as on a first night. Her maid was rung for. The eldest and reddest one came.

Barrie and I went out together, I longing for a few words in the corridor, or at least a friendly pressure of the hand. But I saw that she was in no condition to be spoken to. The reaction was coming on, and I let her go at once. She almost ran down the pa.s.sage to a room not far away, and slammed the door.

Neither Mrs. Bal nor Barrie appeared again that evening. Presumably they had dinner together in Mrs. Bal's quarters; and the heather moon shone as through a gla.s.s darkly for the rest of us. Aline was ordered to keep her room for the next few days, which settled our plans--or hers, at all events. And we were a party of men dining that night, the two Vannecks and Somerled and I, for Mrs. James "had a headache," and Maud kept Aline company.

The great Somerled was reflective if not morose. I wondered what his schemes were concerning Barrie, for I imagined uneasily that he was working with some idea; and if I didn't mean to sit still and let him cage the dove while it fluttered homeless and forlorn, I must come out of my corner into the open to fight for it.

After dinner Aline sent for me, and her message included Somerled, if he could "spare her a few minutes." He could and did with a good grace. We went together to the small sitting-room, which looked dull compared with Mrs. Bal's decorated background, though George Vanneck and I had done our best, on an Edinburgh Sunday, in the way of roses. Somerled had forgotten to incarnate his sympathy in flower form, and I read remorse in his eyes as they fell upon Aline, piteous and prostrate.

Electric light was not permitted, and the room was lit only by a few green-shaded candles which made the invalid ethereally pale. She reclined on a sofa and wore her best tea-gown, or whatever women call those loose cla.s.sic-looking robes nowadays. It was white, and becoming.

She had built up a wall of cushions, against which she leaned, and her hair was done in two long plaits under a fetching lace cap which gave her a Marie Antoinette effect. This hair-arrangement interested me scientifically, because when I breakfast with Aline in our private sitting-room at a hotel, she often has her hair hanging down, and it has never looked so long nor so thick as it did on this occasion. She must have had some clever way of plumping it out. Her eyes being tender and inflamed had temporarily lost their beauty, so she had tied over them a folded lace handkerchief or small scarf.

"You look like a model for a cla.s.sic figure of Justice," said Somerled--"all but your smart Paris cap."

"Why, was Justice blind? I thought that was Love," said Maud Vanneck, gayly airing her ignorance. I couldn't help thinking--nor could Somerled, I'm sure--that Aline looked more like Love-in-a-mist than stern Justice; but I feared that he had definitely ceased to regard her from the love point of view, if ever he'd inclined to it.

Aline, who had heard nothing yet about Mrs. Bal, was anxious for the story. I saw that Somerled desired me to speak, but I threw the responsibility on him. I wanted to know how he would tell the story; but I might have guessed that he would be as laconic, as non-committal as possible, and that, much as he might yearn to do so, he would not criticise Barrie's mother.

"I think she admired her daughter," he said quietly, "but being what she is, and looking no more than twenty-five, what can one expect? Of course the sister fraud will be found out sooner or later; but the important thing in Mrs. Bal's mind seems to be that it shall be later."

"Is it right for us to help her deceive poor Mr. Bennett?" asked Maud Vanneck, who is a person of earnest convictions.

I chuckled at hearing the big chap called "poor," perhaps for the first time in his life; and even Somerled smiled.

"None of us are pledging ourselves to lie for the lady," said he. "We simply hold our tongues. If Bennett asks Mrs. Bal to be his wife, he's not the sharp man of affairs he's supposed to be if he expects to find her a mirror of truth. When he discovers that she has a grown-up daughter he'll shrug his shoulders, and perhaps never even let her know she's been found out. I'm not very well acquainted with Bennett, but I've met him a few times, and his most agreeable social quality seems to me his strong, rather rough sense of humour. I expect he'll see the funny side of being hoodwinked by Mrs. Bal. And a few years more or less on her age--what do they matter to him? He's forty-five; and on the whole he couldn't get a wife to suit him better."

"I have a sneaking sympathy with Mrs. Bal," confessed Aline, in her gentlest voice. "She's conquered all of you men, and has no further fear of you; but I feel that she's trembling in her shoes because of Maud and me. I should love to rea.s.sure her and let her know that we're not cats."

"Shall I take her a message?" I suggested, trying not to seem too eager.

"I'm sure she'd like to get it."

Aline smiled indulgently. "Poor boy, doesn't he want me to say 'yes?'

It's too late this evening, I'm afraid; but call on her and Barrie early to-morrow morning, and ask if she'd care to drop in on the poor invalid, on her way to rehearsal. I'd better see Mrs. Bal alone. She may want to say things she wouldn't wish Barrie to hear--don't you think so, Mr.

Somerled? And, by the way, now your little ward is--more or less--safe in other hands, have you settled your future plans?"